


Of Destruction and Rebirth

by teamchaosprez



Series: Of Reincarnations and Royalty [2]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Amputation, Apocalypse, F/F, Illnesses, Implied Sexual Content, Minor Character Death, Plague, Prosthesis, Reincarnation, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-07-28 22:59:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 30,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7660309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamchaosprez/pseuds/teamchaosprez
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Humanity is dying out - not because of zombies, an Ice Age, a nuclear meltdown or anything of the sort, but because of a particularly bad plague. There are things to be found in the darkness, though, that may lead to lighter times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is the prequel to "of magic and monarchies," taking place during the plague that wiped out the humans and during lapis and peri's first life.
> 
> robyn = lapis. she'll get her canon name as a nickname later  
> jasmine = jasper

It was common knowledge that after you hit the ripe age of sixteen, assuming this was your first life, once you meet your soulmate you’d be able to tell who they are based on words scrawled across your body, because that would apparently be the first thing they said to you. After your first life you’d be able to find them anywhere else, no problem, because your souls were entwined for all of eternity. Robyn Lazuli knew the words like the back of her hand, probably because they  _ were _ on the back of her hand - “Your eyes are fanfiction blue.” At first, she hated her soulmate for that, but as time went on she grew to anticipate the moment she would hear that from the love of her life. She knew that they would be a dork, but hopefully a lovable one, right?

Unfortunately, the end of the world as you know it tends to complicate things.

Humanity wasn’t ending with an asteroid, or a zombie apocalypse, or an Ice Age, or anything of the sort, and Robyn didn’t know why, but she found that rather disappointing. She had seen enough apocalypse survival movies that she had always assumed she would know what to do - but here it was, the year 2052 and humanity was on its last legs because of a fucking sneeze. Or, well, a disease that started with sneezing and didn’t end there until all of your organs had stopped working and you had absolutely no chance of survival. In some weird way, it made sense, because illness was all over the fucking place in human history, but with modern medicine the seventeen year old had been always assuming that there was a cure right around the corner and it would just be some scare.

There almost had been a cure, but if she knew her news right, some religious fanatics had burned down a bunch of research facilities, destroying knowledge that would have saved humankind because “God wanted them to die, so we shouldn’t stop His plan.” Robyn wasn’t sure whether she was more frustrated that such a cult existed or that they were large enough to cause such widespread disorder - but either way, she knew that she was witnessing the end of humanity.

And the fact that she had yet to contract the illness was, quite honestly, terrifying. She didn’t want to be the last human living, or one of the last ones. After spending weeks on end cooped up in her mother’s house, long after the death of said parent, she had begun feeling restless, wanting to reassure herself that she wasn’t alone and wouldn’t be left to rot by finding her cousin Steven, or her aunt, or  _ anybody, _ really. She almost hoped that she would get the virus. At least then she would be assured that the end was in sight and she wouldn’t have to face so much of the unknown.

The front door was jammed shut; something had fallen in front of it, and Robyn let out a frustrated and halfway hysterical growl when she realized she couldn’t force it open. She hadn’t possessed much upper body strength to begin with, after all, and she was malnourished from not having eaten in the four days since her mother died. Frustrated, she slammed her fist against the stubborn wood and made a mental vow to tear it down if she ever got hold of an axe.

The other option was the sliding glass back door, but she cringed at the thought. She’d have to pass her mother’s corpse on the way out, and she had been deliberately avoiding the kitchen so she wouldn’t have to look at the body still where its owner had collapsed and died mere days earlier. Robyn wasn’t exactly in denial of her parent’s death, per se, but she was very… adamant about not facing her demons. That was why she’d been starving since she discovered her mother’s death.

With a heavy sigh, the teenager wiped her hands off on the skirt she wore. That settled it, she would have to break a window and make a run for it like that. Internally, she hated that she was seventeen and already so thoroughly on her own, but she didn’t have much of a choice in the matter; it was the end of the world, humanity was on its last legs, all that fun shit. As much as she’d joked about wanting everything to just end, she really hated all this… but she’d hated life beforehand, so she doubted there was really much of a difference.

Clutching the handle to her knapsack a little tighter in her hand, the teenager walked to one of the front windows, climbing up on the end table that rested there and cursing lightly when the surface wobbled. The native Hawaiian sighed heavily before feeling around the edges of the window; some of them could pop out in the house, she knew that, but apparently they were all on the second floor. She  _ could, _ theoretically, head upstairs and do things the easy way, but she didn’t have much strength left and would probably fall to her death immediately upon climbing out.

Actually, that almost seemed like a halfway decent option.

The teenager grabbed onto a nearby fire poker, slamming the sharp end of the stick into the glass separating her from the outside world. To her satisfaction, it cracked almost immediately; it must have been thinner than she expected. Within a few harsh jabs, the glass gave way, window shattering and giving her the first breath of fresh air she’d experienced in the month since a national emergency was declared and citizens were commanded to remain indoors. She almost wanted to cry from relief; freedom was a new concept to her after so much time in the house.

Scrambling out the opening was not something she hesitated in doing, immediately hopping down to the ground and trying to resist the urge to kiss the grass beneath her feet. It was dead after going unwatered for so long, but it was such a fucking relief to be out and feel something other than carpet, tile, and wood for the first time in a month. In some stroke of luck she had avoided landing in broken glass on her bare feet; anything involving the windows was the first stroke of fortune she’d had in a long, long while, since even before the breakout.

Careful to avoid slicing her feet open, she carefully hopped over the danger area, smiling faintly as she continued on her merry way with her belongings over her shoulder and a set of priorities firmly within her mind. Food was the definite first, then making it as far to the other side of town as she could, then finding shelter until she could keep moving. She knew the city fairly well, so she seriously doubted it would be all that difficult to survive for a short while.

Why did she still want to survive? She honestly didn’t know, but her feet were carrying her in the direction of a nearby Speedway, so she allowed it. All she knew was that having food within realistic reach was making her hunger even more obvious, stomach growling and begging her to get some grub. That was motivation enough. She’d take everything a day at a time, try not to let her mental state shatter past the point it already was and survive as long as she could without Mother Nature doing her in. That was a goal for now. One she might actually be able to go through with.

The closed sign was clearly visible on the gas station and convenience store even from the parking lot, but there was a shattered window that she could crawl through without an awful lot of difficulty. That meant somebody else had been here before her; she could only pray that all of the food wasn’t gone. This part of the city was fairly safe and sheltered, so she doubted that people would be greedy enough to steal everything and leave nothing behind for anyone who may come afterward.

Cautiously, the teenager pulled herself over the empty windowsill, careful to hop around the broken glass. Maybe there was a pair of flip flops somewhere in the store; she had been without shoes since before all of this even began. The night before citizens were called to remain indoors, she had gone to a party where she got hopelessly drunk and her friend Jasmine had dared her to throw her sandals into the ocean. Because her impulse control and ability reason was shot to hell, she had done it; she was really regretting it now that there was a genuine risk faced by her feet. She wasn’t quite suicidal enough to get herself an avoidable infection and die by that yet.

The fluorescent lights had long gone out, leaving the Speedway dark and eerie, the dim lighting coming from the evening outside. She shivered slightly and wrapped her arms around herself; it wasn’t cold, but she was a little intimidated. Paranoid that she would be attacked for daring to step into the abandoned convenience store. Robyn sighed slightly, telling herself that she was being silly, before moving forward and scouring the shelves for some sort of non parishable food that wouldn’t have gone bad without cool air in the last month.

She almost cried in relief when she spotted a box of granola bars, almost completely full. Without hesitation, the teenager pulled her knapsack to her front and opened the front pocket, stuffing almost all of the snacks into it and leaving just a few in case anybody else decided to break in and look for some food. Unable to ignore her miserable stomach any longer, she almost immediately unwrapped one and stuffed it in her mouth, doing her best to remind herself to take it slow she wouldn’t chuck up everything she’d just eaten later. It already felt really off against her empty stomach.

Another lucky find, she located four water bottles in another aisle and stuffed them in with the granola bars; other than that, though, the store was completely empty of anything that hadn’t gone bad. She made a mental note to ration out her findings so she wouldn’t run out before she could find another source of food before making her way back to the window, climbing back outside before flipping the bag back to her back, stuffing her hands in her pockets, and walking back down the road.

Now that she was actually out of the house and moving, it didn’t seem as terrifying anymore. If anything, it felt… freeing. She was no longer under a quarantine that apparently hadn’t helped anybody. She was no longer hiding in her bedroom, living in fear of the corpse downstairs and what might happen if an infected person might break in. She was outdoors. Breathing in the fresh air and making her way to where she might be able to find other survivors. She hoped she would, anyway; she didn’t know what she’d do if she walked all the way to the Quartz Universe house and found her favorite cousin dead.

Before she could break out in a run and laugh all the way to the opposite side of town, though, she heard a noise from a nearby building. Robyn stopped walking, mostly out of curiosity and partially out of concern, and began to approach the destroyed pile of bricks; part of the way there, she noticed a sign high up on the front of the building - RESEARCH FACILITY, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Ah. So this was one of the places that could have held hope for humanity but got snuffed out.

The teenager was about to shrug it off as just being falling bricks or something of the sort, but a repeat of the noise caught her attention, as well as a quiet and weak voice asking for help. She would normally have just turned away and continued walking, but something deep in her gut urged her to keep moving towards the facility, pull some bricks out of the way near where the voice was sourced and try to help whoever was trapped there. Pale skin was the first thing she could see that let her know that she had reached the someone who was stuck there, and once she had hit the jackpot she couldn’t stop. Despite how selfish some people tried to call her because of her stubborn and survivalist nature, Robyn had a bad habit of trying to help people in need no matter how much that would hurt her.

The girl hidden there was blonde, with tired green eyes hidden behind cracked glasses, the thick black frame miraculously intact. She didn’t  _ look _ sick, and she wasn’t coughing or sneezing, so Robyn wasted no time in gently wrapping her arms around the girl’s middle and pulling her out of the rubble. She seemed to be mostly uninjured, but tired and weak - had she been trying to dig herself out? The girl was shorter than her but weighed more, so mere moments after pulling her out she stumbled back, the stranger landing on top of her with their noses almost touching.

“Your eyes are fanfiction blue,” the girl spoke in a quiet and tired voice, and Robyn felt her heart rate speed up considerably, pounding against her ribcage. Her soulmate. This girl was her soulmate, and by some stupid stroke of luck she had unearthed her during the middle of the fucking apocalypse. She struggled to figure out something to say, wishing that she could visibly see the writing on this girl’s body so she could know what the fuck was going to come out of her mouth.

“You don’t even know my name yet, and you’re already trying to seduce me,” she choked out, moving her hand so that the back would be visible to the other girl.

Ah, convenience, showing its beautiful face at the worst possible time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peridot's introduction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it was only a matter of time before i wrote something where peridot basically has the brain of a supercomputer

Peridot was a genetic experiment created for the purpose of being more intelligent than the average human being. She had been created in a lab to have a higher reasoning skill than average children and to have a higher capability for memory that would allow her to memorize formulas and new information within moments of learning it. She had been raised in a research facility, surrounded by doctors who were far from parents to her and very rarely allowed to have contact with the woman who donated an egg to create her and was the closest thing to a mother she had.

She wasn’t expected to live past three. She was just a rough draft, there were probably some problems with the formula used to ‘wire’ her brain, she might age quickly due to some of the adjustments made to her genetic code, et cetera. When she was three days away from her fourth birthday and growing at pretty close to an average rate, her life expectancy was raised to five. Then ten. Fifteen. Now, Peridot was sixteen years old, and the team of scientists and doctors that were observing her very closeted and protected child decided that they were expecting her to live well into her thirties, maybe as long as a normal human being would.

She wasn’t supposed to have a soul, let alone a soulmate; she’d been told that since she was twelve and her newfound access to the Internet made her curious. She had been in a lab for her entire life, created on a petri dish and carefully observed from the moment she showed signs of life. There were very few times she was allowed to leave the small bedroom she called home, and when she was, it was normally for appointments and schooling despite the fact that she already knew the most advanced level of just about anything that could be taught. She was not allowed to have any detailed social media, but she was allowed to watch things, play video games, and read content. She was very sheltered, very protected, and very secret. She never really understood why.

Some ‘normal’ people didn’t even have soulmates. Some people didn’t like the thought of having a soulmate because they didn’t like romance and got platonic soulmates instead, with a different way to figure it out. This might have made Peridot feel better if she was like that, and if she was more independent than she actually was, but she wasn’t. She was very much a lesbian and had extremely low self worth from the total lack of familial love she had received throughout her life. She wanted a soulmate. She wanted to be wanted in general, to know there was someone out there for her, waiting to get to know her and spend the rest of her life with her. But that apparently wouldn’t happen.

The day she was created was the eighteenth of August in the year 2036; the sixteenth anniversary of that day was when she was supposed to get up bright and early and start studying a strand of an illness that had taken over almost all of the world and was just beginning to cause deaths in some very rural countries. She was to analyze it and look for a cure using knowledge already tucked away into her supercomputer of a brain; that was her birthday present. Her first really big assignment! It was way better than the usual cupcake or Mist gift card that she usually got!

When she was getting ready that morning, however, she noticed a scrawl of lapis blue writing across her lower abdomen; “You don’t even know my name yet and you’re already trying to seduce me.” Excitement surged through her entire body; she had a soul! She had a soulmate! She couldn’t wait to see her, to know what she looked like and to kiss her softly and be with her forever! If she ever got out of the facility, that was; there was no way she’d be able to uphold any romantic relationship in here.

She had been excited to tell her creators all about it, but heard them talking behind her back about how they could never let her go, that she wouldn’t last a day in the real world and maybe when the scientists started dying out somebody would have to kill her to make sure that she wouldn’t get out and start spreading word about the conditions she had been raised on. Something about making it look like she’d hit the limit of where her body could take her. As she hid around the corner and listened to the people who had raised her talk about government grants and using Peridot’s development and intelligence to figure out ways to alter the DNA and capabilities of regularly conceived human children, she began to feel sick to her stomach and light headed. She had just been an experiment. Just a means to figure out things that would help the advancement of the human race.

On the one hand, it was nice to know the purpose of her creation, but on the other, she suddenly felt far more alone and far more pointless than she ever had in her life. It wasn’t a good feeling. She wanted it to go away and for her life to go back to what it was like before she knew.

However, on the bright side, it gave her the incentive to figure out a way to escape.

Peridot knew the laboratory where she lived like the back of her hand. She knew the best routes to get out if she could figure out the patterns of the people who worked and patrolled in the hallways. She had a responsibility to figure out a cure, but as soon as she did that, she would make a run for it and be free; she didn’t know how she was supposed to survive all on her own in the real world with so little inexperience and probably no legal documents proving her existence, but she was intelligent and worked well with computers and math and science. She could do it. It might be the only way to survive.

It was within two weeks that she had a cure all figured out. She just needed to test it to make sure that it would work properly, send it out to a particularly sick and nearly wiped out area and see if it worked on people who were dying anyway. She didn’t like the morals of her creators, but she needed to test it one way or another to get her job done, and that seemed to be the preferred method.

She was filling a syringe with the green liquid of her cure when everything went to shit.

At first, it was just a ruckus near the front entrance, and a bunch of guards congregated that way to take care of it. It wasn’t until the vast majority of them were shot down that the doctors panicked, some gathering their research and trying to jump out windows while others did their best to grab beakers or bunsen burners or anything nearby that could be used to bludgeon an intruder only to be shot down. Peridot had no idea what to do, watching everyone she knew die around her and trying very very hard not to panic because no escape routes or emergency plans had ever been recited to her. 

The first thing that popped into her mind was to make a run for her bedroom. It was securely locked when the door was closed, and it was unlikely that anybody would be able to get to her. Peridot hurriedly finished pouring the cure into her syringe and made a run for it, ducking out of the way of gunfire and jumping over the dead bodies of scientists and doctors who had been hard at work.

Somebody must have caught onto her running, because they chased after her, and adrenaline filled the experiment’s veins as she sprinted in the open the last stretch to her bedroom. Peridot slid into the room and pulled the massive door down with more than a little bit of effort, sliding it into place against the floor and watching as a bullet dented the metal right where her heart was minutes later. She clutched her chest, bunching up the fabric of her shirt in her fist and wheezing to catch her breath.

It was at that moment that the weight of the situation hit her, and she sunk to her knees. Everyone she had ever met had just died, or was dying on the ground beyond her door. She was now trapped in a room that was windowless for privacy, and she couldn’t leave if she valued her own safety. She had access to her secret stash of food stolen from the cafeteria, but that wasn’t a whole lot, and humanity had no access to the cure with the exception of what was in her hand. Everybody outside was going to die, too, and she was going to be left all alone in the world.

No.

Her attention turned to the bricks of the walls, and she moved the syringe to her pocket.

She was going to get out of here and live the rest of her life in freedom.

She would break down these walls and leave.

It took a month of chipping into the bricks and forcing them apart with whatever strong items she could find for Peridot to finally break out of her bedroom and see daylight and feel fresh air for the first time in her life. She wanted to cry from relief, but settled instead for attempting to squeeze through; when that didn’t work, she tried to move some of the looser bricks on top of her…

And ended up making the whole wall collapse on her.

Peridot found herself squashed beneath a pile of bricks within moments, a pile that miraculously settled itself so that she wasn’t horribly wounded, with just some cuts and bruises. She tried to move, but couldn’t seem to shake the heavy debris from her body without causing more harm. So Peridot sighed heavily and leaned her head back, hoping that somebody would come around sometime soon to help her get out of this mess.

For twenty four hours she laid in place, hoping that someone would come by and dig her up, but nothing happened. She began to lose hope and believe that she was just going to die underneath a pile of bricks, forgotten and alone with nobody left alive knowing that she ever existed. Never getting to experience a sunset, or go for a walk, or meet the girl whose words were scrawled across her abdomen. Peridot groaned and hoped that she would starve quickly, but before she could really sink into self pity and suicidal thoughts a full day after she had been trapped, she heard footsteps.

“Help!” she did her best to call out despite her limited amount of oxygen, She listened to the footsteps stop, and then repeated her cry; the footsteps then began to approach her location, and before she was able to fully register what was going on the bricks were being shifted away from her body. She could see the face of a tanned skin girl within a few minutes, and it was to the relief of her sore and cramped muscles that she was yanked out of the bricks.

She landed on top of the stranger, and found herself staring into the most beautiful pair of dark blue eyes that she had ever seen. Her heart caught in her throat, and it took a minute of her staring at the first human around her age that she had ever met before she figured out how to talk. “Your eyes are fanfiction blue,” she spluttered out, and immediately wanted to bitch slap herself three or four times for saying something so stupid. 

The girl stared at her as if in awe, and Peridot was about to snap that she didn’t see what was so amusing, but before she could, she got a response; “You don’t even know my name yet, and you’re already trying to seduce me.” The stranger then showed her the back of her hand; sure enough, the first words that had come out of her mouth were printed on the skin there in neon green. Quiet awe then enveloped the blonde for several moments as she looked between the girl and the writing before she rolled back to sit with a decent amount of effort, moving her shirt up slightly in order to show off her own soulmate marking.

“Funny, you’re doing that too,” she commented breathlessly, and before she could stop herself she started laughing. Wow. She never would have guessed that she was going to meet her soulmate on her first day of freedom, much less while the entire human race was dying, but she couldn’t help but find it amusing in a very, very strange way. The girl started laughing mere moments later and sat up as well, wrapping her arms tightly around Peridot - that startled her, but she returned the embrace without hesitation, almost feeling like she was about to cry.”

“What  _ is _ your name?” the girl asked, gently smoothing the bangs that had gotten overgrown from Peridot’s forehead. Jesus, she was already smitten, she realized as her heart skipped a beat.

“Robyn. What’s yours?”

“Peridot. It’s Peridot.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The two lovebirds find shelter, and Robyn gets a nickname.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god jesus im sorry  
> the last few months have been absolutely kicking my ass  
> but im back!!! updates may be slow for a little while but this fic WILL BE WRITTEN TO COMPLETION EVENTUALLY i swear on me mum

Robyn’s soulmate was cute and blonde with dorky glasses, pale skin, and a slightly obnoxious voice that made her heart flutter a bit. She was intelligent and a bit socially inept, had high energy despite being exhausted, and almost cried when given food. She had apparently been born and raised in the laboratory where she had been found, and had a prototype cure to the disease in the left pocket of her jeans, kept intact by some heavenly miracle. She told her in a hushed whisper, as if afraid that somebody would overhear, that this was her first time ever in the outside world and that she had never been allowed to leave the laboratory because she was created to be intelligent and experimented with.

Her name was Peridot. She was malnourished from spending the last month alone, hard at work and with limited food, and she was a little bit sickly in skin color from spending her entire life tucked away from the harsh bright rays of the sun, but she was beautiful. She had green eyes that lit up when she was excited, and she spoke a little too loudly and quickly for Robyn to understand sometimes, but it didn’t matter because she got so wrapped into whatever she was explaining that it made up for it.

Was it too soon for Robyn to say that she was in love?

Maybe there were no standards for that sort of thing, considering this girl was her soulmate; their spirits were intertwined, created for each other. Of course they were  _ supposed _ to fall in love, especially now, in their first life together - so when they began walking together, Robyn didn’t hold herself back from reaching over and taking Peridot’s hand. Her soulmate seemed tense for a moment, but quickly squeezed her hand and didn’t pull back; she supposed it must have been the lack of human contact that made her react in a delayed fashion. That was… kind of saddening.

“So, where are we going, Lapis?” Peridot asked eagerly when they were about halfway down the main street, turning to look at Robyn with her head tilted and a smile on her face. The older girl blinked, a bit confused by the nickname, but luckily the blonde wasted no time in explaining. “My soulmate marking is in lapis blue, so that’s what I’ve been calling you since it showed up. I wasn’t gonna  _ keep _ calling you that, but your last name is Lazuli, so it’s just kinda perfect. Is that okay?”

Robyn hesitated, biting her lower lip, before nodding slightly. “Yeah, it’s okay. I… actually kind of like it. Lapis. Perfect for my end of the world new identity.” She then smiled and let go of Peridot’s hand in order to wrap her arm around her waist. It was a little more difficult to walk in the new position, but she didn’t mind; she wanted her soulmate as close as possible. Now that they were together, being apart sounded like the worst outcome. She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about being this attached to someone she’d only just met, but for the most part she didn’t really mind.

It took her a moment to remember the question she’d been presented with, and when she blurted out the answer her face had turned bright pink. “Oh, my aunt lives on the other side of town, so I want to make my way over there to see if she and my cousin are okay. As long as that’s okay with you, that’s where we’re headed… after that, though, I’m not really sure. I’m sure they’d be happy to let us stay in their house, and there’s plenty of room, but… resources are going to start being hard to come by.”

Peridot nodded enthusiastically, the smile appearing back on her face quickly. “Sounds good to me!” she spoke in a chipper voice, and Lapis’ smile widened a bit at how excited she seemed to be at the prospect of going to the house of people she just met. “Staying with them might be the best option, though, because it’s going to get more dangerous as resources dwindle. If-if movies are anything to go by, anyway. And that’s only if they’re still alive - it might not be wise to stay in the house if they’re not, because the sickness can last and still be contagious up to three weeks after the host’s death.”

Lapis tensed slightly, looking over at her with a frown. “How come that wasn’t in a PSA or something? Lots of people could’ve been saved from the infection, and I was stuck in a house with my mother’s corpse for two weeks.”

“Well, first of all, it was a late discovery, so it’s likely that the base was raided and destroyed before the word could get out. My supervisors told things to the public in a very organized and planned fashion. I didn’t especially approve of it, but a majority of why they tried to keep knowledge about the epidemic on the down low was to get some power. So the second possibility was that they just didn’t want to tell anyone - they might have wanted enough people to get infected to make them lots of money without having to raise the prices out of, say, the middle class’ price range.” Peridot’s mouth twitched into a thin line as she spoke, and that was Lapis’ key clue that she didn’t approve of many of her creators’ policies. Under most circumstances, she might have reacted badly, but she made a point of making an exception for her soulmate.

“That’s… gross,” the older girl responded slowly, the smile completely gone from her face as she led Peridot to the edge of the street and took a turn to the left. She knew the way to the house well, even if going the route usually taken by car would extend how long it took to get there. “I’m almost glad humanity is dying out. There wasn’t really much hope for us anyway.”

“I’m not sure I agree with you. Sure, what my creators did was really bad, but I think humanity might have stood a chance and started to get better.” There was a sort of childish optimism to Peridot’s voice, and Lapis felt a little guilty when she thought about continuing to be pessimistic, so she just stayed quiet and continued walking. Spending time in the real world might say everything for her, anyway - not that she fully considered this plagued wasteland that was once civilization to be the “real world,” of course, but humanity was still terrible, and unless they made it somewhere safe they were doomed to fall victim to sickness, or stronger humans, or both.

The sun was beginning to set overhead, the sky turning to shades of red and orange and yellow, and  _ that… _ was concerning. The neutral expression on Lapis’ face twitched downward into a frown, and she began to survey their surroundings as they walked, trying to gage out where would be a good place to spend the night. Shelter while the sky was dark was ideal; this was hardly the apocalypse scenario from the hundreds of movies she’d seen in her lifetime, but it was still the end of the world, and there might be some dangerous people out and about at night.

Peridot, though, seemed enthralled by the change, green eyes directed upwards and an expression of wonder on her face. It led Lapis to wonder whether she’d ever witnessed a sunset before in her sixteen years locked away in a concrete building; she supposed that the colors of the sky would be something great to experience for the first time, even if it was hardly an ideal spot for it. She managed to smile slightly, though her heart picked up the pace a little at the sight of her soulmate so fascinated with bright orange light casting its color on her.

Lapis didn’t notice she’d stopped walking until Peridot turned her head toward her with a confused frown. “Why’d we stop?” she asked, and the older of the two could feel her face heating up and turning pink moments later.

“Sorry,” she responded unevenly, continuing her way down the street at a slightly quicker pace. “I just… got distracted. Um, any ideas for what we can do for shelter tonight?” She was vaguely aware that her voice had gotten quicker and more quipped, but did her best to ignore it.

Peridot squinted at her for a moment, studying her closely, before shrugging and answering in a very matter of fact tone. “Well, I have no experience with this sort of thing, but I would assume that a house would be the safest if we can find a way in. There might be non perishable foods to eat, and theoretically speaking we could lock the doors and board up windows to feel a little safer and significantly lower the risk of another group joining us and causing trouble.”

Well, that seemed reasonable enough. Lapis nodded slowly, glancing around at the rows of houses surrounding them; they were in the suburbs at the moment, but the very edges, and the city’s old warehouse district was beginning to grow fairly close. They probably wouldn’t be able to do the same thing the next day, but if they got started walking early they might be able to reach the Quartz Universe house by nightfall assuming no complications arose. “Sounds good to me,” she spoke after a moment of looking around, giving a slight shrug as she walked to a two-story house at the edge of a street.

As expected, the door was closed and locked tightly, and with her soulmate trailing behind her Lapis walked around the house and peered into the lower level windows she could reach. Most of the windows were intact, and the house seemed abandoned; that was both good because it meant security and bad because it meant she would have to cause some serious property damage to get inside. With a heavy sigh, she began looking around the edge of the house and the garden for a rock or something to throw at the glass, but before she could really accomplish anything Peridot tugged on her arm - and when she glanced over, she found that the younger girl looked pretty excited about something.

“I can pick the lock!” Peridot declared, a set determination in her eyes that Lapis already felt herself giving in to. “If we can find something I can bend to fit the lock, I can get us in. I did a lot of research on it a few months ago, because I wanted to see if I could find a way to leave the facility as soon as my soulmate mark showed up.”

Lapis nodded eagerly and glanced around their surroundings, her gaze settling on a gas station at the opposite end of the street. There had to be a paperclip or something in there, at the very least, if it hadn’t been totally ransacked yet… and she was having pretty decent luck with finding resources in abandoned stores so far, so it was worth a try. “Okay. Stay here and make sure nobody takes the house, I’m going to go see if I can find a paperclip or a bobby pin. I don’t want you getting hurt, so please don’t try to do anything until I get back, okay?”

Peridot nodded, and without a moment’s more hesitation, Lapis was off like a shot down the street, determined to get something to pick a lock and get back to her soulmate as quickly as possible.

* * *

 

Picking a lock took a  _ lot _ longer than it did in all the tutorials, Peridot had hastily announced after trying for twenty minutes to break into the chosen house. The suburbs were totally abandoned and nothing dangerous had found its way over, so by the time an hour had passed Lapis found herself sprawled on the lawn of dying grass and watching the first few stars begin twinkling against the darkening sky. That was one good thing about the Earth’s population plummeting; light population was way less of a big deal than it used to be.

The older of the two was only inspired to move by the victorious cry that came from the blonde after a solid hour and a half of working the lock, and even then it took her a moment to force her tired body to rise off the ground and walk over to the now wide open and welcoming front door.

Her soulmate grabbed onto her hand moments after she approached and yanked her inside, pulling the door and closing it before twisting the lock in order to make sure it was safely sealed shut until they needed to leave. Peridot was beaming at her, apparently very proud of herself, and Lapis couldn’t help but smile widely back; she really was adorable, and the more time they spent together the more Lapis was glad that she was destined to be with her instead of somebody else, as well as absolutely ecstatic that they were both safe and sound for the night.

The older of the two couldn’t hold herself back from leaning forward and catching Peridot’s lips in a gentle, soft, and quick kiss. Though it was fleeting and impulsive, it got her heart racing and her face heating up, and the pulses of glee that rushed through her veins could never be replicated.

Peridot seemed stunned for a moment afterwards - almost startled - but before Lapis could find the words to apologize or explain herself, small arms wrapped around her neck and the younger girl had initiated a second kiss. This one was a lot slower and deeper, and Lapis had very little trouble melting into it, her own arms going around her soulmate’s waist and a soft sigh exhaled through her nose.

Neither of them seemed to want to pull away, but it was Peridot that did so for the sake of getting oxygen. “I’m pretty tired,” she spoke softly, resting her head against Lapis’ shoulder and making her heart flutter once more. Wanna figure out where the bedrooms are and get some rest?”

“Yeah,” the older of the two managed to respond softly. “Yeah, rest sounds good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u guys for yr patience, if this chapter isnt very good its because im still Hella Depressed And Stressed  
> seriously it's been three months since i wrote the first few paragraphs this chapter took me THREE MONTHS to write and its not even extra long goddammit


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peridot is a bit too naive for her own good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ACTUALLY FINISHED A CHAPTER WHEN I SAID I WOULD WHAT'S MY PRIZE

Unfortunately, Peridot’s first awakening lying next to her soulmate was a rather rude one.

At first, she hadn’t really processed what woke her up, so it was pleasant to be pressed up against Lapis, warm skin against warm skin, soft breaths being the only thing breaking the silence for a few seconds. She revelled in the actual human being next to her, in the splash of freckles across her face and the deep sighs of her sleepy breaths, in the messy blue hair that covered some of her face and was made even more frazzled by bedhead. This was the first time in her memory that she woke up next to another person, and by the stars, was it a wonderful first experience.

However, within a few moments, the  _ reason _ she was woken up became painfully clear to her. Peridot was sinking back into a sleep and had snuggled up a little bit closer to Lapis, but was cut off by a pounding on the front door. The blonde sat up straight in bed immediately, heart thudding in her chest, and instinctively she grabbed for her soulmate’s hand. The older girl didn’t react for a moment, but when the knocking became a little louder she started shaking Lapis’ shoulder to try and wake her up.

She didn’t stir for a moment, and when she did it came in the form of a small groan. Peridot responded by trying a little harder until her soulmate finally rolled over onto her back and squinted at her; that was something, at least. “Lapis, somebody’s knocking on the front door,” she hissed, glancing at the open doorway to the bedroom and trying to ignore the mild fear in every beat of her heart. She had never been in a fight before, and she was certainly in no shape to learn at the moment.

Eventually, Lapis did move, sitting up and stretching. Just a second after she did, the pounding at the door came back even louder, and that seemed to wake her up the rest of the way. Peridot watched with wide green eyes as her soulmate sprung to life, hopping out of the warmth of the bed and dashing over to the window facing the street, leaning as much as she could - trying to see whoever was at the door, Peridot could only assume. “Looks like a gang,” she hissed back, and a little more fear was the immediate response. Lapis stepped back and drew the curtains as she turned to face her again, the look on her face mostly annoyed. “It’s a group of people. Really tall and sturdy chick in a leather jacket at the front, about five smaller people behind her.”

Peridot’s mouth was dry from fear as she slowly walked to the older girl. She was only really vaguely aware of her hand going to hold onto Lapis’; the thought of life being ripped away from her just as she was starting to live it was genuinely terrifying to her. The thought of her soulmate being taken away a day after they met was almost as bad. “What are we going to do?” she managed to ask, her voice a little more shaky and high in pitch than she would have liked.

“We’re going to stick together,” Lapis responded without skipping a beat, and Peridot watched as her dark blue gaze flitted around the room. She really hoped the older girl knew what she was doing, because nothing she had ever read or played prepared her for this moment. “I’m going to see if I can get us out without calling any attention to ourselves. I don’t think either of us are really in good enough shape to be fighting anybody. And we need to get going anyway.”

“Are you sure they’re dangerous? What if they’re just… looking for survivors?” Peridot asked tentatively, inching a little bit closer to Lapis and squeezing her hand even tighter. She wanted to believe the best about people, she really did; what choice did she have but to be optimistic? She was malnourished and had only a little bit of muscle from digging her way out; Lapis was thin as a twig and looked just as breakable. There was no way they’d survive if they had to fight for it.

“They might not be, but we can’t afford to take the risk. We have to assume the worst, at least until we’re both armed,” Lapis spoke quickly, gathering her bag off of the ground and dragging Peridot along as she opened the door to the bedroom. “We’re going to raid the kitchen and find some non perishable foods, and hopefully a weapon. Stay close to me, and stay really quiet. I might need you to be on lookout and tell me if somebody gets into the house.”

Peridot was about to object, but nodded, deciding that cooperation was best. Lapis had more experience in the actual world; she could only trust that her soulmate knew what she was doing, because she sure as hell didn’t. “Um, we’re locked in. I don’t think they’ll be able to find their way inside unless they have a key or something, and we had to pick our way in.” Unless they decided to break a window, but that would really only make the whole house less safe for them too. “And like I said, they might not be dangerous at all. It seems a little unfair to assume the worst…”

“We have to,” was Lapis’ answer, and she was starting to sound annoyed, which was all the motivation Peridot needed to decide to shut her mouth. “I’m hoping that they won’t get in and they’re not dangerous, but we have to assume the worst. If they  _ are _ dangerous and they  _ do _ get in, one or both of us could be killed or worse. Plus, neither of us is infected and you have the cure - can you imagine how valuable we could be? We don’t know if society has changed already.”

Peridot wrinkled her nose, but decided to trust Lapis’ judgement. She allowed her soulmate to guide her downstairs, staying low to avoid any windows, and positioned herself in front of the counter when they reached the kitchen. She listened silently to the rustling behind her as Lapis looked for food, and kept her attention locked on the front door across the living room. It had gone quiet since the last knock - almost too quiet - and though Peridot sincerely hoped that the gang had decided the house wasn’t worth their time, she knew it was very unlikely. There were multiple more houses down the block, but if there was one thing the experiment had figured out about other humans, it was that they were stubborn.

Quietly, she peeked over the counter and at her soulmate. Lapis was concentrated completely on the task at hand, blue hair in her face and a frown occupying her lips. Peridot would be tempted to stop and stare for a couple of moments, but the fear completely blanketing the current situation was enough to make her twitchy and restless. She knew that it was probably a bad idea to move around, but she couldn’t sit still, so she rolled up to her feet and tiptoed over to the front door.

She hoped that they wouldn’t be able to see her back through the peephole, and silently pressed her face closer until she could squint and see a distorted image of the people at the door. There was a very big, pale haired woman at the front, and five short but intimidating women behind her - all probably related, considering they looked almost identical. Peridot’s lips folded downwards into a frown as she examined the group - they seemed like a force to be reckoned with, sure, but not to be afraid of. They looked more bored than hostile.

“What are you doing?” Lapis hissed over the counter, and Peridot glanced back momentarily to find her soulmate squinting at her with a fearful expression. “Get back over here, you’re going to get caught!” She then pulled herself up to her feet and began walking quickly over to her, head ducked in order to keep out of sight of the windows and the peephole. Before the blonde could snap at her that it was fine, she had already made her way over and grabbed onto her upper arm. 

“They could be good allies if we give them a chance,” Peridot responded in an equally hushed tone, watching her soulmate carefully. Lapis was frantic and afraid, so she tried to keep her voice calm and rational. “I’m not going to open the door unless I’m sure they’re not aggressive anyway. They seem calm enough, and there’s no way we’re going to make it very far with just the two of us. Please just relax for a minute and think of a list of pros and cons or something?” Yes, she was being naive, but she genuinely wanted to think that everyone had some good in them and wasn’t just going to attack as soon as they possibly could.

“We can’t give them a chance! There’s too much of a risk. Please, just come back over to the kitchen,” Lapis’ voice was pleading enough that as soon as a tug was given to her arm she relented and went back with her soulmate. “I’m almost done. As soon as I’ve gone through these last couple of cupboards we can make a run for it out the back door and we can go. Maybe we’ll make it to my cousin’s house before nightfall if we get going really quick.”

Although she was a little bitter about not getting her way, Peridot moved quickly to help Lapis sort through the canned goods tucked away. There was a lot that would last a while, which was a good thing if apocalypse survival games and stories and the look on Lapis’ face was anything to go by. “I think that’s everything,” the older girl commented in a whisper as soon as the entire cupboard had been combed through, zipping up her bag with a satisfied smile and slinging it back over her shoulder.

Peridot eagerly followed her soulmate out of the kitchen, ready to get moving again and pretty pleased that nothing had happened involving the gang quite yet. Lapis motioned for her to stay quiet again as she slowly slid the glass sliding door open and stepped out, grabbing onto the blonde’s hand quickly as she snuck out into the backyard. The door was left agape, but Lapis didn’t seem to be all too concerned about it, so Peridot didn’t comment; she supposed it didn’t matter whether it was open or closed, as long as both of them got away without being grabbed by one of the muscular girls that had showed up and forced them out.

It was quiet enough in the yard that the experiment wasn’t really as worried as she probably could have been, even though she could tell from Lapis’ tense shoulders that her soulmate was sort of on guard at the moment. She remained as quiet as she possibly could, and held onto the older girl’s hand with a grip that could have killed a small animal, but for the most part she was kind of relaxed. This hadn’t turned out nearly as badly as either of them was expecting.

However, before she could really manage to gloat, it became painfully clear that she had been very, very mistaken.

One thick arm wrapped around her waist from behind before she really knew what was going on, and her mouth was covered by a meaty hand. She tried to cry out and squirmed to attempt to free herself, adrenaline making her blood run cold - she was vaguely aware that Lapis’ hand had been ripped from hers and the older girl was locked in her own struggle against one of the identical girls from the porch. Everything had begun to blur together in her panic, moving way too quickly for her to process.

A fist connected with the side of her head, and everything went black.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lapis negotiates for Peridot's freedom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOOO DAMN IM SORRY hopefully updates will be more regular now

Lapis wasn’t entirely sure how she managed it, but eventually she managed to tire out the girl that had attacked her and send her running back to the house. Exhausted by the fight, which had been more taxing than it should have been because of how unhealthy she was at the moment, she turned around just in time to see Peridot being dragged into the house, and for several moments she couldn’t completely process what just happened and was stuck just staring as the door slammed, separating her from her soulmate and snapping her out of whatever stupor she was trapped in.

The teenager sprinted to the door and slammed into it, fists pounding on the wooden surface as hard as she possibly could. Jasmine was a friend of hers, and part of her couldn’t believe how thoroughly betrayed she had just been - but, honestly, most of her could. The big girl was never really much for sympathizing with other people, and it was far from a surprise when she did something for her own gain even though it hurt another; hell, sometimes she hurt another just for shits and giggles. Lapis couldn’t think of any reason she would want Peridot, considering her current group seemed to be made up of people that fought more than they thought.

“Jasmine!” she shrieked at the door, not letting up in the noise she was making with her hands - she was distressed, and angry, and probably about to have a panic attack, but she couldn’t walk away. Peridot was in trouble; the girl she had been waiting for since her sixteenth birthday could be taken away from her so soon after they found each other. “Jasmine, let her go! Come on, there’s no reason for you to hold her, she hasn’t done anything to you!”

She didn’t stop until the curtains had parted from the window on the door and the face of her former friend appeared behind the glass. Yellow eyes narrowed at her, and Lapis barely resisted the urge to flip her off, choosing instead to glare with venom in her blue gaze. If she were to piss off the brute, there was absolutely no chance she would ever see Peridot again. When the curtains fell back in place and blocked her view of anything inside the house, Lapis immediately began thinking of a way to break into the house and get her soulmate in a stealthy manner - but she didn’t need to think long, as the lock clicked and the door opened moments later.

“Man, Robyn, I didn’t think you’d be so torn up about some pipsqueak,” Jasmine scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning against the doorway. Lapis wanted to kick her ass, but knew that even making a move to punch her would be a death sentence. “You should be thanking me. She was just slowing you down and causing problems, I bet.” She spoke as if she was intending to do Lapis favors from the beginning, but the teenager knew the older girl well enough to know that was never her aim. She wasn’t about to trust somebody that couldn’t just leave a couple of malnourished short girls alone.

“Just tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you as long as you let her go,” Lapis’ voice came out in a low growl, fists clenched at her sides and whatever panic was left in her mind losing itself to anger and some form of planning. She would save Peridot; she had to. “Please, Jas. She’s my soulmate. If our roles were switched, I would give yours up for you.”

Jasmine snorted and rolled her eyes before reaching out and grabbing Lapis by the wrist. She tried to struggle to get away, but stopped quickly when she realized that she was being pulled into the house. Okay, this was dangerous and probably would end in her demise or injury, but she was getting closer to Peridot, and that was enough for her for now. She could figure out a plan from here. “Alright. I’m sure we can negotiate something, but I can’t see why you’d risk everything for this nerd. The soulmate system is twisted and overrated. You should be thanking me.”

Rage was beginning to build up in Lapis’ chest more than anything else, and she clenched her jaw in order to avoid ranting and getting herself into even more trouble. “Just take me to her, please. And tell me what you want to let her go. I’ll seriously do anything or give you anything.” There would always be more food and more supplies, and she could live without her dignity - but Peridot was completely irreplaceable. She would never have another soulmate, another person meant for her and her alone. She would never forgive herself if she let her go.

She followed behind Jasmine reluctantly as the bigger girl led her back into the house and to the closet underneath the stairs. The door was slid open and Lapis was shoved inside a little too roughly for her liking, and blue eyes glared back at the brute before she noticed Peridot laying against the corner just as the door slid back shut and darkness filled the room. Her breath caught in her throat, and she was mostly relieved that she was alive, but when she reached for her she needed to crawl a little closer to be able to reach in the tight space and was caught off guard by the sharp gasp of pain that left her soulmate…

And the blood she could feel leaking from the younger girl’s leg.

“Oh my god. Oh my god,” she whispered, already feeling herself beginning to panic as she backed up as much as possible and started looking around for something to wrap up whatever wound was there. “What happened? What did they do to you? Is it just your leg?” she asked, her voice coming out high and hoarse even though she tried to sound like she was remaining calm.

Peridot moved before she responded, her arms wrapping around Lapis tightly - the older of the two girls hugged back equally tightly, closing her eyes as a heavy sigh left her. She was ready to repeat the question, seriously concerned for her soulmate’s survival - fuck, they hadn’t even been apart that long, she could never take her eyes off her again - but before she could force another word out, Peridot spoke up. “No, it’s - it’s both of my legs. They stabbed my thighs to keep me from running when unsupervised. I’m pretty sure that it missed the important arteries. I’ll be fine, I just - can’t exactly walk efficiently.”

A faint sigh of somewhat relief passed through Lapis - she’d been expecting much worse, honestly, considering how terrible Jasmine apparently liked to be now. She hadn’t exactly trusted her former friend much  _ before _ the apocalypse, but at least now her unwillingness to trust was validated. “Okay. I’m going to get us out of here, I promise - I’ll negotiate. They’re a bunch of meatheads, but even they can probably see the worth in supplies.” She sighed heavily, gently stroking Peridot’s hair when she rested her head against her chest. “I don’t care how much I have to give them. I’ll give up all of our food if I have to. There will be more - we need to survive this.”

She felt Peridot tense slightly, apparently ready to argue, but she nodded in response instead. “Maybe don’t give them everything, though? Food’s gonna get hard to come by… and if you have to, just leave without me. I’ve already proved that I’m not experienced enough to survive this…”

“Shut the fuck up,” Lapis snapped, feeling a little guilty when Peridot flinched at her tone and pulled out of the embrace. “We’re both getting out of this. I’m not leaving without you. And I’m not letting you beat yourself up, either. So suck it up.”

Peridot opened her mouth as if to argue, but apparently thought better of it and curled in on herself slightly. Lapis felt a little guilty for snapping at her, so she didn’t let the suffocating silence last for very long. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m just stressed, and I… don’t like hearing you talk that way. I promise I won’t snap at you again,” she murmured, gently holding her soulmate and sighing a little in relief when Peridot latched on again with a tight grip.

Lapis sighed heavily and just sat with the younger girl for a little while, running one hand through her hair and humming softly as she stared into the darkness of the closet and waited for something to happen. She tried reaching for the doorknob when the silence got suspicious, only to find that it had been blocked with a chair or something and there was no way out. Peridot stopped bleeding after a little while, which was more than enough to make the older of the two a little more optimistic about their odds in this situation.

She wasn’t sure how long they sat in silence and listened, but when she finally heard footsteps approaching the door she was simultaneously terrified and relieved. The sooner she could negotiate with Jasmine and her goons, the sooner she could get herself and her soulmate out of there, and God would that ever be wonderful. The door creaked open, and Lapis flinched at the light that spilled into her sensitive vision, but before she could really adjust to the sudden change her upper arm was grabbed by a rather meaty hand and she was yanked away from her soulmate and out of the closet. Desperately, she tried to reach for Peridot and take her along, but decided rather quickly that she would be best off cooperating and figuring things out without the distraction of her soulmate.

Jasmine shoved her onto the nearby couch, and she landed with a grunt, a little bit annoyed at being manhandled. Still, Lapis managed this situation with as much grace as she could muster, sitting up straight with her hands folded in her lap and her sack of food still thankfully resting against her hip. “What do you have to offer me?” the bigger girl asked with a grin that Lapis wanted desperately to punch off her face, leaning forward and resting her chin in the palm of one hand.

“I’ll give you all of the food that we took from this house, and whatever we have left over from before. We’ll let you keep this place as territory without fighting you on it. And if we find anything useful further into town, we’ll come right back and let you know about it. We’ll be your informants.” Lapis’ voice was monotone, as she didn’t want any desperation or pleading to escape. Jasmine would just see that as a sign of weakness and definitely wouldn’t take any of her offers.

“An interesting proposition,” the brute responded, leaning back into the chair she was sitting on. Lapis wasn’t sure she’d ever heard her former friend speak so officially before. “But there’s one more thing I want from you.”

“Tell me what it is.”

She gestured her forward and murmured in her ear.

Lapis nodded to accept. After all, it wasn’t like it was anything they hadn’t done before, and the offer probably could have been much, much worse, if she knew anything from movies.

Twenty minutes later, she didn’t hesitate in running out on Jasmine immediately and making a beeline for the closet underneath the stairs, wrenching it open in order to reach her hand for her soulmate. With wide eyes, Peridot accepted her hand and rose with a lot of help - Lapis wrapped her arm around her own shoulders and put her own arm around her waist, supporting her as she led her out of the house and back outside. She wasn’t really all that ashamed - it was something that she needed to do for the survival of herself and the love of her life.

“What did she want?” Peridot asked, and Lapis couldn’t help but feel really, really bad for the younger girl. She had a couple of nasty cuts on her thighs, and was limping pretty heavily - every step probably stung like nothing else. Hopefully, they wouldn’t get infected.

“Not a lot. Food, territory, information.”

The lie slipped out easily, and perhaps the most concerning thing for Lapis was that she didn’t regret being dishonest one bit. Peridot’s legs were already hurt, after all. It probably wasn’t a very good idea to let her go running back to Jasmine with fists raised.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lapis tries to save Peridot's life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mmmmmm regular updates sure are yummy arent they
> 
> idk how to write pearl or bismuth it's been a Long Time

For two days now, they had been on the move. Long talks as they walked, Peridot leaning mostly on Lapis and Lapis mostly just trying to keep their minds on anything but the situation at hand. Peridot learned a lot about her soulmate during those two days. Her favorite color was purple. She’d been raised by her mom after her father died in a plane crash when she was a baby. She was the captain of her school’s swimming team until kink experimentation went terribly wrong and gave her a mild case of hydrophobia that made completely immersing herself terrifying. She had regrets, she had things she was proud of, and she had some mental health issues she struggled with.

Peridot told her things, too, but with her sheltered history there really wasn’t much to tell. Her favorite color had been blue since the soulmate mark appeared, but before that it had been green. She liked Doritos. She’d been raised in a lab since she was created. She wrote and posted a lot of  _ Camp Pining Hearts _ fanfiction, and for the most part the feedback she received on every chapter was really the only human interaction she had outside of the doctors and scientists that worked in the facility.

They discussed labels, whether they should consider themselves girlfriends or engaged or wives. Sure, there was no way to get a hand on rings or priests or anything needed for the latter two, but in Peridot’s eyes they were just social constructions - Lapis laughed a little at that. Eventually, they decided on ‘girlfriends,’ because the idea of speeding through that quickly at the age of seventeen was a little bit threatening to the older girl given her relationship history. They could progress their relationship, sure, but Lapis felt a little more comfortable waiting until a couple of years had passed, and Peridot already loved her enough that she had absolutely no problem with that.

They found more food in an assortment of drugstores and houses long left behind by the owners. It replaced pretty easily the supplies that Lapis traded to Jasmine for their freedom - Peridot had a feeling that her girlfriend had given up more than just food and weapons and supplies, but she wasn’t about to press and question her about it, considering she seemed to not want to talk about it that much. It was fine, as long as they were together and alive and okay. That was what mattered; that was, really, all that mattered during the apocalypse, right?

They talked for the most of their time journeying into town, but after several days, the cuts on Peridot’s thighs started looking worse and worse. The red skin around them was almost painfully heated to the touch, swollen, and miscolored. Red lines stretched out over her skin leading out from the main reddened area. She was in worlds of pain, but she continued forcing herself to keep moving with Lapis’ help. It was the older girl’s decision to put off the quest to find her family in order to search for medical attention, and though Peridot protested a little at first, she knew that it was the best option to just do as Lapis suggested - she was afraid that she would die otherwise.

After a day of looking for anyone or anything that could help, Peridot couldn’t walk any further and despite trying so hard to keep strong and keep moving, she collapsed on the pavement. Lapis panicked when that conspired, and Peridot couldn’t help but admire that she swallowed down all of it rather quickly. She managed to move and cooperate enough to be dragged to a somewhat safer spot behind the counter in an abandoned pharmacy.

“Is there anything back here?” Peridot called back to her girlfriend, lifting her head a little to watch Lapis shuffle around in the bags and shelves and drawers of the pharmacy. There were a lot of prescriptions and over the counter medicines laying around, so there was at least some hope that there would be something - anything - that would help with the infection and potentially save Peridot’s life or at least slow it down until they could get their hands on something serious. 

“No. At least, nothing I can understand and trust the labels enough for. I’m not giving you somebody else’s prescription and making things worse,” Lapis responded with a heavy sigh, and Peridot didn’t need to look over at her to know that she was massaging the sides of her head, as she often did when she was stressed. “I think there’s a family doctor office a few hours away, though. I can walk over there and see if there’s anything for infections and cuts or even an actual medical professional. We need to get our hands on something that’ll heal you, Dot.”

The younger of the two was a little frightened by the prospect of Lapis leaving her all alone, especially considering what they had just been through. Her naievete had given way to skepticism and a bit of paranoia, and she couldn’t help but feel that some terrible fate would befall her girlfriend if she left without anybody trustworthy to help her. “I don’t think either of us should be alone,” she spoke up, her voice coming out a lot shakier than she wanted it to. “It’s dangerous - you could be attacked, or somebody could break in here, or something else equally terrible could happen.”

“I’ll be careful, and if you stay hidden back here you’ll be fine too,” Lapis’ voice was gentle, and Peridot was a little reassured when she leaned forward and warm lips brushed up against her forehead in a soft kiss. “I’ll be back by tomorrow morning, I promise. And I’ll bring help if I find any. We’re both going to make it through this, your legs will get better, and it’s all going to be okay. I swear that on my mother’s soul.” The blonde forced her gaze to meet the intense blue of her soulmate’s, and even though she didn’t want any of this to happen, she trusted Lapis and the determination in her eyes.

So she nodded.

* * *

 

Lapis took the cure in her pocket at Peridot’s insistence - just in case she came into contact with a sick person and needed to heal herself up immediately - and set off into the evening at sunset. Under less pressing circumstances, she might have meandered on the way there and admired the rich oranges and yellows of the sky, but as it stood she was too busy praying that she properly remembered the way to the doctor’s office and studying the landmarks she passed.

She arrived at Beach City Family Practice well after the moon had risen in the sky and the evening had turned into a more sinister and difficult to navigate night. Lapis was relieved to see a light on inside, and broke into a sprint as she rushed to the doctor’s office and tested the door, finding it locked. Heart pounding in her chest, the teenager began slamming her fists on the door, begging rather loudly to be let in, yelling about how she needed help from somebody that knew medicine.

When the door opened and the familiar face of Pearl Escent, family friend and ex girlfriend of her aunt Rose, appeared, Lapis could have cried with relief. Not only was she excessively glad to see somebody she knew that she could trust, she knew that Pearl was a very organized and very intelligent nurse who definitely knew how to treat an infection. Though she hadn’t gotten along with the tall woman all that much in recent years, she still threw her arms around her tall and thin frame in what might have been the happiest hug since she first met Peridot.

“God, am I glad to see you,” she breathed out quickly, pulling away in order to grab onto Pearl’s wrists pleadingly. Said nurse just watched her with an eyebrow raised, a look of relief in her baby blue eyes but a small frown poking at one corner of her lips. “Listen, I don’t have a lot of time to explain, but I met my soulmate about a week ago, and we really hit it off, and we got attacked by a gang three days ago, and both of her thighs got slashed so she’s been having a hard time walking but they got infected and we seriously don’t know what to do and I just want to save her but I know nothing about medicine and we’re hanging out in a pharmacy but I don’t want to hurt her further. Please help.”

Pearl stayed quiet for a moment, apparently processing the information, and Lapis tried desperately to ignore the urge to bounce on her heels impatiently. “Well, I can come check it out. If you’re hiding out in a pharmacy, there should be antibiotics and medicines there. I can treat her infection, but if it’s gone untreated for three days we might need to amputate her legs… and I do know that one person that works with prosthetics is staying here too, so I can wake her up and take her along, but she’ll most likely ask you for something in return for the metalworking that comes with making somewhat functional prosthetic legs with the limited resources left.”

Lapis wanted to faint at the idea of her soulmate getting her legs cut off, but she nodded vigorously nonetheless. “I will do  _ anything _ to make sure she gets out of this alive. I’ll trade my own life if I have to,” she affirmed, glancing back into the night. “Can we hurry up and go, though?”

“Of course. Just let me wake Bismuth and get some things together.”

* * *

 

Bismuth made Lapis nervous. She was big, she was loud, and she had a physique that was a little too close to Jasmine’s for comfort. But she wasn’t outright malicious, and she did seem to be genuinely interested in helping - she knew how amputation worked, which Pearl did not to that extent (and Lapis certainly didn’t know anything at all), she could make a pair of prosthetics out of the spare materials she had on her for an item of equal or greater value, and for the most part she seemed friendly.

Why she was demanding something in return for her assistance, though, the teenager didn’t know, and she wasn’t about to ask. As long as she could get help for her girlfriend, she didn’t care. As long as she didn’t have to face the wasteland that Earth was turning into alone, she didn’t care - she wasn’t about to stick with Pearl and Bismuth and wait out the end of the apocalypse, hell no. Their quiet and lowkey flirting certainly didn’t make  _ that _ a viable option.

Saving Peridot was the only viable option.

She sat on the counter of the pharmacy, fidgeting and waiting for something interesting to happen - she hoped that it was good, prayed to a god that she didn’t even believe in that any news she would get would be positive. She counted the tiles on the ceiling, moved on to the floor, and got bored; then she moved on to trying to read her own palms.

She barely got past ‘short lifespan’ when Pearl called for her, and she wasted no time in leaping off the counter and sprinting over. Peridot was staring at the ground as if in a trance, Bismuth was frowning, and Pearl’s lips were in a tight, pale line.

“The good news is, we can save her and stop the infection,” she spoke in a rather clipped tone, hands folded in her lap. “I found some antibiotics and bandages - but the bad news is, the infection got into her bloodstream, and it could spread. So Bis and I are going to have to amputate both of her legs a little bit above the cuts, and then Bismuth will get to work on a pair of prosthetic legs to at least make it possible for her to walk a bit clumsily again.”

Lapis swallowed thickly, but nodded in response. “Okay,” she spoke simply, her voice weak. “As long as Peridot consented to the whole thing, then okay.” Without being told to, she walked stiffly over to her soulmate and sat beside her, taking one hand in her own and giving a slight squeeze. Peridot seemed to respond to that somewhat, slumping against her with a heavy sigh and squeezing her hand in return. “I’m going to stay right here with you,” she murmured quietly in her soulmate’s ear, and the younger girl gave a small nod in response.

“Question is,” Bismuth spoke up, holding a rather intimidating looking axe in one hand as she watched the two teenagers with a somewhat grim expression. “And I hate to have to ask this, but I gotta keep a living going somehow. “What can you give me in return? Not food or anything basic like that, I already have plenty of it. And no sex, either. I ain’t interested. That’s what Pearl’s for.” She ignored the cry of dismay and punch she received from the thinner woman with a small smirk.

The older of the two had to think on that for a moment before reaching into her pocket. She closed her fist around the small vial of green liquid, considering her options a moment and completely paying no mind to the rapidly objecting blonde next to her before reaching out the cure in an offer. “This is the test of a cure for the plague,” she spoke in a very flat tone, and Peridot was giving her a death glare. “A group of doctors and scientists in a facility created it before they were shut down. You can have it. Just save her.”

Bismuth stared at the vial a moment before nodding firmly and taking it in her much larger hand. “Well, let’s get started then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry bout the fade to black ending i don't know much about amputation or prosthetics so we're just gonna pick up about two weeks after the end of this chapter?????? shit's still gonna b kinda dark tho sorry


	7. Chapter 7

Even with more painkillers than was probably healthy for someone of Peridot’s size to have at one time, she was in worlds of pain through the entire operation. Even two weeks after the debacle had passed and she was doing significantly better, Lapis was still haunted in the middle of the night by the terrible agonized screams that had escaped her soulmate. Even with Pearl sticking around to make sure that Peridot took her medicine and Bismuth working tirelessly on the prosthetic legs she had promised and Lapis had traded their most valuable resource for, the older of the two still felt somewhat sick every time she looked at her beloved girlfriend and saw stumps where legs should be.

She blamed herself. If she had been just a little more diligent, if she hadn’t decided to take food from the kitchen, or if she had been able to communicate with Jasmine sooner, maybe Peridot would still be relatively unharmed and maybe they would even be in the Quartz Universe house by now. But no, they were trapped in a run down pharmacy with Pearl - who could get rather insufferable when the stars weren’t perfectly aligned over an occasion - and Bismuth - who was starting to not scare Lapis as much but wasn’t exactly the most interesting company as she worked with the prosthetics.

The legs were finished after a few days of the biggest of the four women working nonstop, and then Peridot had to relearn how to walk. She complained often, about discomfort or how clunky she walked now that she had metal from halfway through her thighs down, and nobody really blamed her or chastised her for it as long as she continued cooperating with her physical therapy.

Lapis, to her credit, kept the self blame and angst she was feeling buried down under twenty layers of trying to be helpful. She couldn’t really do much, considering she knew little to nothing about what needed to be done to help Peridot medically, but she was definitely there for emotional support and allowed her girlfriend to lean completely on her when walking got too hard; she even carried her around when it was necessary. The teenager didn’t allow herself to feel much about it, and what little she felt she redirected to a growing rage towards her ex friend. She promised herself that she was going to murder Jasmine next she saw her for doing this to Peridot.

If Pearl was to believed, then the younger girl wouldn’t be able to walk efficiently enough to get anywhere significant for at least a month, maybe two. She learned fast and was getting her physical abilities back quickly enough - probably due to her altered genes and wider capabilities - but both Pearl and Bismuth had some serious concerns about her lasting health and any potential infections, so the two soulmates were essentially put on house arrest for the time being, because Peridot couldn’t get up and out and Lapis absolutely refused to let her out of her sight ever again. She was even more stubborn and protective than she had been before the whole debacle.

Two weeks after Peridot’s prosthetics were finished, Lapis began to lose hope in ever getting to her aunt and cousin. She felt guilty for thinking about that, but since her girlfriend was in much better shape and had occupied most of her undivided attention for at least the last three weeks, Lapis figured she was allowed to feel bad about possibly losing her chance to ever find her family again. She did her absolute best to keep it to herself, but she was aware that she was beginning to look more and more fidgety and impatient and upset as every day passed.

Lapis and Peridot shared an old inflatable mattress that they had hidden behind the counter, and the older of the two spent most nights curled protectively around her soulmate, holding her close as if afraid that she would be taken away - and maybe she was, ever so slightly. Even with how much they had helped, she couldn’t bring herself to fully trust Pearl and Bismuth, and had taken it upon herself to act as Peridot’s official guardian from now until the end of her life.

Nothing would ever hurt her again. Not if Lapis had anything to say about it.

Time and days had melted into each other. Whether it was late September or early October, Lapis honestly had no idea; the change of the seasons could be credited to either month. All she really knew was that it was the middle of the night, and she was unable to get any sleep whatsoever as she curled up on the mattress and held her sleeping soulmate close - or, well, she thought she was sleeping, anyway. She was too wrapped up in her thoughts to pay much attention.

Wind and rain buffeted the pharmacy from outside, and even though there were three other people in the building and she was holding one of them close, Lapis had never felt quite so alone. There was a certain air of isolation and abandonment that covered the apocalyptic world like a thick cotton blanket, or maybe even an eerie fog. There was rarely anything but quiet, and the few people that walked past outside, they needed to hide from for fear of running into somebody with less than kind intentions. It was with the thought of loneliness in her mind that Lapis curled a little tighter around Peridot, and was more than a little bit startled when the younger girl suddenly spoke up.

“Are you okay?” Peridot asked in a sleepy and soft voice, and gently ran her fingers up Lapis’ arm; the older of the two gave a heavy sigh and rested her forehead against her girlfriend’s, hearing her hum slightly in response to the contact. They had only grown closer through their forced stillness, and even though they had only known each other perhaps a month, Lapis couldn’t imagine life without her soulmate; she didn’t know how she had ever lived without her.

The isolation was worth it, if it meant keeping Peridot alive and safe.

“I’m fine,” Lapis responded honestly, her voice in a quiet but decidedly more awake whisper, and gently brushed her lips against Peridot’s forehead. “I’m just thinking, that’s all. About our current situation. Nothing important. Go back to sleep, Peri.”

Lime green eyes blinked up through the darkness at her and narrowed, and Lapis tried to give a small smile to reassure her; after just a moment, Peridot burrowed her face back against the teenager’s shirt. “You should get some sleep, too.”

“I will, don’t worry.”

And though she tried, she couldn’t fall into unconsciousness until the sunrise was peeking up and casting a red light through the front windows.

When Lapis woke up less than an hour later, she was a little panicked to realize that Peridot was no longer safely nestled in her arms. She sat up quickly, her head spinning a little from the sleep deprived movement, and looked around the back room quickly - her heart pounded and she tried to calm herself down, tried to tell herself that her girlfriend was fine and was just getting food or something.

Her gaze settled on the blonde in a corner mere moments later, and Lapis was so relieved that she made her way over quickly without even questioning what she was doing so early. A frown settled onto her face as soon as she noticed that Peridot was tying on her prosthetics; she didn’t see Pearl or Bismuth in the room, and it was too early for physical therapy, anyway - Peridot mostly preferred to crawl around, claiming that the prosthetics took too long to put on. “What are you doing?” she asked, not entirely sure why she was whispering; maybe it was the quiet.

“We’re leaving before the others wake up,” Peridot responded in a very matter of fact tone, nodding slightly as she finished putting on the prosthetics and gripping the counter in order to rise to her artificial feet. “We’ve been here long enough, and I know that we’re both getting more than a little bit stir crazy. We need to keep moving, or we’re never going to get anywhere, yeah? So grab your bag and pack up some food, because we’re going.” She looked so determined and ready to roll that Lapis almost felt a little bad about walking over to her to disagree.

“Look, we’re not taking you out of here,” she shook her head slightly as she spoke, gently taking hold of her soulmate’s hands. “I won’t know how to fix it if something happens to you, and I don’t want to take that risk. I think we should stick around until Pearl clears you to leave. Considering she’s a medical professional and you just got both of your legs amputated. Let’s get back to sleep.” She tried to tug her soulmate back to the mattress, but Peridot stubbornly stood her ground.

“I don’t want to be the reason we’re stuck here!” the shorter girl snapped, and Lapis was startled enough for a moment to let go and stop trying to tug her away from the corner. “I know that you’re going to say that I’m not, and I know you’re going to try to reassure me or whatever because that’s what you do. But we are stuck here, and it is because of me and my stupid legs. And I don’t want to see us get double crossed again if Pearl and Bismuth decide they can only feed the two of them, or the reason we get in trouble if bandits or something decide to break into the pharmacy. Not to mention what food we have here will wear out faster than we can replenish it eventually.”

Lapis’ lips straightened into a thin line. She hadn’t been considering any of that beforehand; she just wanted to get out of the pharmacy for the sake of leaving and finding somewhere else to stay that wasn’t as secluded. But Peridot was right; there was absolutely no way she could deny that. They had lots of reasons to leave, and even though she knew that they would be screwed if Peridot got hurt or one of her prosthetics broke, she didn’t completely want to argue.

Maybe it was selfish of her, but she wanted to leave, and if Peridot honestly believed that everything was going to be fine, Lapis was willing to take a leap of faith. So she straightened up, a grim expression unmoving from her face, and nodded to communicate with her girlfriend that she was willing to go through with it. “Okay, but just know that if you get hurt and die, I’ll slap your corpse while crying.” She was only about half joking, a small half-smile on her face.

Peridot bounced a little in place, and if Lapis had any doubts that she wanted to get out of the pharmacy just as much as she did they dissolved right then and there. “Good! Pack up some of the food laying around and any medicine that you recognize the name of or that Pearl used on me. I’ll make sure that everything is in order and I’ll write a note explaining why we left. We probably should get out of here within the next hour, because I think that’s when Pearl usually wakes up, and we don’t want them to get up and stop us, right?”

“Right,” Lapis confirmed with a firm nod, grabbing her bag off of the ground and slinging it over her shoulder with a determined expression. “Alright, sounds like a plan. Let me know if you change your mind or anything at all changes.” With that, she stepped away in order to steal whatever supplies she could get her hands on, with only a glance over her shoulder to make sure that Peridot was doing alright and had begun writing the note.

An hour later, they stepped out of the pharmacy with their arms linked together and Peridot leaning on Lapis ever so slightly. Neither of them spared so much as a glance back at the brick building as they began walking down the street to continue on their way.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lapis and Peridot reach the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok this is the last of the dark stuff for AT LEAST a few chapters and it's mostly fluff and mental health recovery until they die after that

Peridot couldn’t describe what exactly it was, but she had a bad feeling about the large house that they approached, even with Lapis’ insistence that her aunt and cousin would take them in. They had been walking for about a week, a lot slower than they probably would have if Peridot still had both of her natural legs working, and watching the excitement build on her soulmate’s face was enough to make her both a little happier and a lot warier; what if something was wrong, or the plague had gotten to them before Lapis and Peridot did? They didn’t exactly have the cure anymore.

And she could think of a million things she would rather see than the look on her girlfriend’s face if they found nothing but a few corpses.

She was pretty tired as they walked down the road, and the soreness in the stumps of her thighs was beginning to get unbearable as they approached the house. Even with Lapis’ support, Peridot could tell that she really needed a break, and probably wouldn’t make it the rest of the way even though the distance was short. “Just go on ahead without me,” she urged the older girl, waving her ahead. “I’ll wait right here. I’m seriously about to collapse if I walk any further.”

She could see the hesitation in the other’s eyes as she glanced at Peridot and back at the house. Her lips were tugged into a frown, and her grip around the experiment’s waist tightened slightly before she nodded and helped her into a sitting position against a tree in the nearest yard. “Yell for me if you need anything at all,” Lapis demanded, her dark eyes narrowing slightly at the blonde before she leaned forward to brush her lips ever so gently against Peridot’s and dash off to the house.

And Peridot watched her go, gently unlatching her prosthetics in order to massage at the sore skin around the stitches holding the flesh at the stump where her thigh ended together. She leaned against the rough bark of the tree and let out a heavy sigh, turning her attention to the blue of the sky and the quiet that the world had settled into. Allowing her breath to slow as she closed her eyes, the experiment allowed herself to drift away into her thoughts with her hands still rested against her legs.

It was strange how much her life had changed over the course of less than a month. She had gone from being a lonely girl, hidden away from the entire world and expected to become nothing but a scientist worked to the bone without pay or anything of any substance, to one of few survivors of the apocalypse, on the run with her soulmate and going through a lot in an attempt to make it to said soulmate’s family’s house. She had learned a lot about the world, she had learned to be less trusting, and she had learned how it felt to be with someone who genuinely cared about her.

Even though humanity was dying out and the world had become a quiet and barren place, Peridot could say with confidence that she preferred her life now to what it had been beforehand. She wasn’t sure if she had even had a life before the apocalypse, if that made any sense; she was just… surviving. Of course, she wanted to help and she wanted to make sure that everyone else could survive, but there was no way for her to do that, so she could say easily that she was… happy.

She came to that conclusion, however, before she heard a shriek from the house her girlfriend had run to. Fear for the older girl’s safety was the first emotion that popped into her mind, and Peridot immediately wanted to jump to her feet before remembering that her prosthetics were off, so she couldn’t, in fact, do that. The blonde struggled to grab onto her fake legs and attach them to her person as she spotted Lapis walking out of the house, her head down and hair in her face. Okay, she was alive, but… but what was wrong? 

As soon as she secured her limbs and rose to her feet, she took a few steps forward, and her soulmate remained in place - she almost seemed to be shaking a little. “Lapis?” she questioned cautiously, walking towards the older girl slowly.

Lapis shook her head, and sprinted for Peridot, almost knocking her over in the strangling embrace she was met with and burying her face against the younger girl’s shoulder. Startled momentarily, the blonde hesitated before holding her close and gently rubbing her back, feeling her shake and gently sob against her as she waited for the older girl to be able to speak.

She never did. She could only shake her head every time Peridot tried to ask a question.

* * *

 

The house was, for the most part, empty. Peridot could figure that out from the unnatural silence as she walked in through the front door, free of even the hum of electronics. Silence, she was finding, she was not fond of - which was understandable, considering she was raised in the nonstop noise of a laboratory and hadn’t been left on her own since she was rescued from the debris in the ruins of her home. Silence made her nervous. Silence made her uneasy. Silence meant that she was alone.

Lapis had adamantly refused to explain or follow her inside, and Peridot hadn’t pushed her on it. She could figure out what was going on by herself, and it was clear just from the way her soulmate was acting that she had witnessed something traumatic, and while Peridot was many things, cruel and unmoving was not one of them. She could adapt, and she seriously doubted that Lapis would make her go alone or even let her enter at all if something dangerous was residing in the Quartz Universe house.

It was a big house, and she could only assume that was because Rose Quartz was a kind woman that took in anybody that needed it - three of her friends along with her husband and son, according to Lapis. That knowledge only made the quiet more uneasy, and Peridot found herself hesitating more and more as she walked around and looked for any sign that anybody was in there. There were no responses to her calling out for anybody living, and though she saw signs that somebody had been inside recently - namely, the dishes in the sink that still looked somewhat fresh - Peridot was beginning to get the sense that the house had been deserted for at least a day or two.

It was in the living room that she found what she had been looking for, and though she had expecting it, she couldn’t help but feel fairly sad.

A tall and heavyset woman lay dead on the couch, her eyes closed and the look on her face peaceful, the ringlets of her hair looking as though she hadn’t been able to style them well in a while. Peridot could only assume that this was the body of Rose Quartz, and that the sickness had taken her.

She didn’t hesitate long, only stepping forward to take hold of the woman’s wrist and make sure that she was dead and not just asleep before quickly turning and walking out of the house. This meant that Lapis had lost her entire family; Peridot was at the front door before she thought to look around for the cousin she remembered her soulmate mentioning, and so she turned around in order to look around more.

She found nothing. If he was alive, he had left by then, and Peridot was somewhat glad for that.

The moment she stepped outside, Lapis was hugging her again, clinging to her front like Peridot was a teddy bear or the only thing tethering her to this reality… which, really, she probably was, judging by the betrayal of a girl she considered to be her friend, the death of her aunt, the fact that they had abandoned Pearl and Bismuth, and the disappearance of her cousin. Peridot felt nothing but sorrow for her soulmate, and so she didn’t complain about holding her tightly as she cried and grieved. She didn’t feel annoyed about having to stay still and calm her down.

She just closed the front door of the house behind her, and held Lapis close.

* * *

 

“We should go through the city,” was the first intelligible thing that Lapis said, sitting down against the tree that Peridot had rested against beforehand and still curled against the younger of the two. “There’s this cabin that my family used to visit before my parents split up. It’s in the woods right at the edge of the city. We can go there. We can be safe and secluded, and away from anybody or anything that might want to hurt us until we die.”

“What if we run out of food?” Peridot asked quietly, not wanting to contradict her girlfriend’s suggestion but wanting to make sure that they would survive in the angry post apocalyptic world. Wanting to make sure that they wouldn’t starve to death. “We can always do runs into town to look for food, but… eventually we’re going to run out and not be in a place we can easily access more. We might have to keep being nomadic, Lapis. We can’t just settle down in one place, because resources are only going to start getting more and more scarce as time goes on.” She sighed heavily, looking up at the cloudless blue of the sky and running through the rest of her thoughts in silence.

Maybe she shouldn’t think so much about survival, because it wasn’t like either of them would have much to survive for in a while. Peridot was pretty sure that humanity was going to die out, and that she might end up alone with Lapis. She knew that she would just be reborn later, maybe in a better time and a different world, and that she would find Lapis there and maybe they would be able to live a more relaxed life free from the apocalypse and deciding whether or not to starve to death.

“We’ll figure it out as we go along,” Lapis spoke in a final and determined tone, and Peridot knew then that she wouldn’t be able to argue with her. Just getting somewhere secluded that they would have to themselves sounded like paradise anyway, even if they didn’t have anything to eat and would die within a year or maybe even a few months of arriving. “Come on, let’s go. The quicker we start walking, the quicker we can get there and not have to worry about any of this again.”

“Okay, okay,” Peridot shrugged, holding her hands out slightly in a gesture of surrender as Lapis hopped to her feet and offered a hand to help her rise. She took it quickly and got up, dusting her shirt off for a moment before allowing her soulmate to grab onto her hand and lead her down the street again, this time towards the distant towering buildings that marked the end of the suburbs and the beginning of the urban area. She wasn’t sure that this was a good idea, but… she would do anything for Lapis.

And, hey, going to somewhere they could be alone for what might be the final stretch of their lives was far from a punishment. Running away to somewhere calm and quiet to just  **live** was just about the least punishing thing that Peridot could think of; even if it was a sentence to death, it would at least be a very calm one, and they could scavenge plenty of supplies while they were in the city. She might be happy. Lapis might be happy. Maybe everything would be okay.

Walking hand in hand with her soulmate and thinking about their limited future, Peridot didn’t think twice about it when she sneezed.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lots of fluff, plus some risque stuff at the end.

Peridot was sick. She wasn’t even going to try to deny it. She was coughing and sneezing like no tomorrow, and her life seemed to have been taken over by a massive cloud of nausea. She soldiered on despite Lapis insisting that she take a break, and she hoped - prayed, even - that the illness that was infecting her was not the plague that had already killed a vast majority of the population. But she knew that was unlikely considering the circumstances, and she knew that Lapis also was aware of that no matter how much she tried to reassure her. She could just try not to fall into a deep pit of despair, and try to assure her girlfriend that they were going to be fine even if she died sooner than planned.

The older of the two blamed herself for this whole mess. She wasn’t open about it, and she didn’t say it exactly; but Peridot could tell that she did just based on the regretful look she often received and by Lapis’ eagerness to help even with things she didn’t really need assistance with. The blonde wanted to talk to her about it and get her to relax or at least stop beating herself up about it, but every time she tried she was just waved off and told that she was more important. Which she didn’t approve with, but couldn’t exactly say very much about if Lapis wouldn’t open up to her.

On their third day of walking through the city, it began to rain - cold drops of water that chilled the two soulmates to the bone and led them to seek out some sort of shelter. Lapis led Peridot to a grocery store with a broken glass door, and the two looked for some food before hunkering down in the remains of a cookie aisle and splitting a box of Double Stuf Oreos between them (“We deserve a treat,” Peridot had declared with a steely determination, and Lapis didn’t argue). They talked for a while, but it didn’t take long for the younger of the two to move over to her girlfriend and curl up against her side, Lapis’ arm wrapping around her easily and comfortably as they listened to the distant sound of rain against the ceiling. The silence was comfortable and the most peace Peridot had felt in a long time, and she was more than willing to keep the moment going, but it didn’t take her long to speak.

“I love you, you know,” she commented in a soft voice, closing her eyes as she rested her head against the older girl’s shoulder. Peridot felt pretty rough, her throat scratchy and sore and her stomach aching, but she didn’t want to complain about her sickness - since Lapis traded the cure to get medical attention for her leg, they didn’t have anything that would fix it. She was still hoping that it was just a cold or a case of the flu, but she knew deep down it wasn’t true.

Maybe she would feel bad about being near Lapis and potentially passing the sickness on to her, but she knew that it was only a matter of time before humanity died out anyway. Grim, maybe, but that was just the way the world was at the moment, and there was no point in trying to lie to herself. All she could really do was try to enjoy the last of her life with her soulmate by her side, and hope that her next life would be a much better one once she was reborn.

“I love you, too,” Lapis responded quietly, and Peridot blushed as she brushed her lips against the younger girl’s cheek. Peridot countered by giving her a peck on the cheek in return, and what followed could only be described as an affectionate competition to see who could kiss who the most. Eventually, they gave up, and a long kiss was shared as they wrapped their arms around each other almost desperately and stayed like that until Peridot had to pull away to get some sort of air. She was hardly a professional swimmer like her girlfriend, after all, and  _ she _ actually needed to breathe.

“So,” Peridot started, before trailing off and pulling her legs so that she was sitting criss cross applesauce on the linoleum floor. She paused momentarily to think of a conversation topic, before realizing that she and Lapis had never really discussed what they had been like or what they enjoyed  _ before _ the apocalypse began and most of the world’s population was eradicated. “What kind of television shows do you like? I’m partial to  _ Doctor Who, _ but I think my favorite show of all time would have to be  _ Camp Pining Hearts _ because it has nostalgic value and is really deep.”

“Oh, I love  _ Camp Pining Hearts!” _ Lapis spoke with more enthusiasm than Peridot had heard from her since she got hurt. “I think Paulette could’ve been written a little better, though. I think she was really obnoxious but trying to be relatable. She and Percy were cute together, though.” She shrugged, leaning against the shelf behind them. “My favorite show of all time, though, is probably _ Jane the Virgin. _ I don’t even know why I like them. Telenovelas aren’t even my style, but I appreciate that it made fun of itself, I guess? Oh, or  _ Friends, _ because it’s a classic.”

“Okay, first of all, Percy and Paulette are terrible together and very heteronormative, and Percy is much better off with Pierre, but I agree that Paulette is a very poorly done character,” Peridot sniffed, pretending to be annoyed even though she was endlessly glad for the casual atmosphere of their conversation. “Secondly, I’ve never watched that first one, but  _ Friends _ is pretty good, I guess! I kept hoping that Phoebe would end up with a girl, though, because she’s  _ clearly _ bi. And Rachel deserves  _ so _ much better than Ross. Actually, maybe Phoebe and Rachel should’ve ended up together.”

“Phoebe and her husband were pretty cute, but I can agree with you about Rachel. Maybe that Winona Ryder character would’ve been a good person for  _ her _ to end up with, because honestly, all the friends except Ross are probably bi.”

The discussion ended up lasting a lot longer than a conversation about the sexual orientation of the characters of a 90’s sitcom probably should have, but Peridot was just glad to have some sense of normalcy in the insanity their lives had drifted into. She just liked listening to Lapis’ voice and how it sounded when she wasn’t saying something pessimistic or dark or apologetic, and she just liked hanging out with Lapis in general.

Their conversation also sidetracked, and they ended up talking for hours until darkness had fallen over the world and there was no way they could leave safely even though there was no rain falling anymore. The Oreos were all gone, and both of them were left laying on the floor side by side and watching the ceiling above them and the long dead fluorescent lights. This was the most relaxed night either of them had encountered for a while, and they were content to lay together with interlaced fingers in the silence of the evening.

“The world is ending,” Lapis breathed out after the quiet had lasted just a little too long. “I don’t know how to deal with that. I don’t know how to deal with my family being dead, and I don’t know how to deal with the hopelessness that sometimes takes me over. I don’t know how to deal with thinking your leg was my fault.” She paused then, squeezing Peridot’s hand as gently as she possibly could - the blonde inched a little bit closer to her to try and provide a little bit of extra comfort. “But all I can say is I’m glad that I found you. You give me something to keep trying for. I love you.”

To say that Peridot was stunned to hear that kind of language directed at  _ her _ of all people would be an understatement. She had never heard anything so romantic in her life - at least, not outside of the millions of  _ Camp Pining Hearts _ fanfictions she had read over the years. Her heart thrummed in her chest, and she found herself rolling over in order to rest herself on top of Lapis with her head pressed against the older girl’s sternum. Long fingers laced through her blonde hair, and she let out a relaxed hum as she closed her eyes.

“I don’t know how to deal with anything either, but I’m really glad you’re with me. You’ve done so much to protect me, and you’ve been so good and sweet - and don’t say anything about my legs, they were not ever your fault and they never will be.” She gently kissed her girlfriend’s face, feeling the other’s skin heat up as she blushed to match her own. “I love you, too. More than anything else in the world. And I’ll stay with you for as long as we both shall live.”

Which wasn’t long, hence why she didn’t say ‘forever.’ Lapis, however, didn’t comment on that if she noticed it, and instead pushed up onto her elbows so that she could kiss Peridot full on the lips. The blonde gasped softly at the contact, and her grip tightened slightly on her girlfriend’s shoulders, chewed and dull nails unintentionally pressing into her skin. Once again, she kept the kiss going long and deep until she needed to pull back for air, their shared soft gasps the only sounds in the abandoned grocery store and filling the night air.

It occurred to her a little too late that she should have held back in order to avoid getting Lapis sick, but she decided immediately that there was no point behind it. Neither of them could really trust anybody but each other; when Peridot died, she would be leaving her girlfriend alone in a sparsely populated world, and she didn’t want to do that. Maybe if the older girl followed her immediately, their souls would even meet up far more quickly than they normally would have, and neither of them would have to suffer through any void of emptiness anytime soon.

They could get sick. They could die. It was fine - they would be fine. They would stay together no matter what, and hopefully in future lifetimes they would be able to spend a longer amount of time together until they died of old age. And Peridot knew that, no matter what, no matter how many times she was reborn, she would adore Lapis Lazuli until the very end of her soul. She would love Lapis Lazuli until there wasn’t a trace of her existence in the universe.

“You’re staring at me,” said object of her affections said suddenly, an eyebrow raised and a small smirk across her lips. “Are you thinking of  _ gay _ things, Peridot? Because I have certain ways of taking care of that, you know.”

“Like what?” Peridot tilted her head slightly, eyebrows furrowed and a questioning frown on her lips. Her blush only deepened when Lapis sat up so that Peridot was in her lap and being held tight. Her eyes widened as she got the general idea of what her girlfriend was alluding at (mostly thanks to her biting her lip and giving her a seductive look), and her face became roughly the shade of a cherry.

“Like making you gayer. If that’s okay with you,” the older of the two responded, her face shifting so that her lips could press against the part of Peridot’s neck where her pulse could be felt. The experiment wasn’t sure that her heart could hammer any harder, and she struggled to find the words to respond for several seconds, only able to make a brief choking sound before she managed to say something intelligent, if graceless.

“Okay!” was all she managed to blurt out.

And the rest of the night passed by in a rather pleasant blur.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lapis is attacked. It's fluffier than you'd expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact i work at kohl's so that was a lil bit of projecting myself onto lap there

It was mid afternoon, and the both of them had a little more spring in their steps than they had the day before. Lapis was content to walk with her girlfriend’s hand in her own, humming merrily as she looked around the dilapidated city that had once been bustling with activity and the last wave of tourists for the year before winter struck. The quiet made her uneasy, but as time went on, she became more and more used to it - and the silence wasn’t so unbearable when Peridot was at her side and satisfied to fill up any emptiness with chatter and affection.

God, Lapis loved her.

She was so swept up in her emotions and happiness that she was letting her guard down more than she normally would have. At most times, she was ready to fight off any sort of threat, but for the moment she was as unaware as any lovesick teenager would be, the only things she could really think of being Peridot and what she imagined her future with Peridot would be like - an option that made her sad and that they could never have with a white picket fence and a normal life, and an option that was beginning to sound more and more attractive considering the circumstances with them happy together in the cabin that they were heading towards.

She would look back on this with regret and wish that she had been more aware and paranoid, but at the moment she was content to be lovesick and happy. For now, everything was fine, and she genuinely believed that neither of them had anything to fear; she thought that, if she had Peridot and she had this feeling of being indestructible, everything would be fine and nothing could hurt her. She didn’t  _ want _ to think that anything would want to hurt her.

Unfortunately, as many things were, this was a wish that was doomed to fail. This was something that she could long for all she wanted, but in a post apocalyptic world with extremely limited resources and nobody left to protect either of them except each other, she had no promise of safety from somebody rushing at them while they were both distracted with a knife and the intent to take their supplies and leave them without food. And though it was quick, that was exactly what happened, somebody that couldn’t be older than fourteen or fifteen jumping out from an alley in an attempt to attack and mug the couple.

Lapis wasted no time in shoving herself between the mugger and Peridot, partially because the younger girl had the supplies and mostly because she would rather her get stabbed than her soulmate. The knife shoved into her side with a blinding and burning pain, and she grit her teeth before shoving the teenager off with a harsh kick accompanying it, putting one hand over the new wound and feeling blood beginning to leak out and stain the fabric of her light blue sundress. She was barely aware that her soulmate screamed her name, focused mostly on the pain and trying to stay alive.

The teen could hear her heartbeat pounding, her breath coming out in light wheezes - adrenaline was what kept her running when the mugger tried to lunge at her again, and the only thing that she could think to do was pull the survival knife from the front pocket of one of their backpacks and hold it out in what she hoped was a threatening and defensive stance. The person looked her over with widened brown eyes, their gaze lingering on the stab wound in her side before seeming to panic and sprint away.

She watched them run away before she was suddenly grabbed by the shoulder on her good side and turned to face her panicking girlfriend. “Lapis, oh my stars, are you alright?” the younger girl demanded, lifting her dress up and away from her middle - slightly painfully, admittedly, since the blood was making the fabric cling like a second skin - and studying the wound. “Okay, okay, this isn’t - this doesn’t look too deep. I don’t think it would have ruptured any internal organs. We just need to make sure that we cover this up and make it stop bleeding and  _ hopefully _ avoid infection…”

Peridot was rambling a little, probably out of nerve, and Lapis was still zoning out as the younger girl took her by the elbow and began leading her to a more secure and safe area to try and fix up her wound. The older teen was shuffled into the empty darkness of a Kohl’s department store, helped to sit down on one of the benches along the outer walls of the store. Her shock was slowly beginning to wear off as the younger of the two did her best to run between the bathrooms and Lapis, cleaning the blood away from the stab wound and covering it with more paper towel.

“I used to work here. Before the apocalypse happened,” was the first thing Lapis said, standing up with some difficulty and supporting herself on the bench - it hurt to breathe, but she wasn’t coughing up blood, so she was assuming it was just the movement of her skin. “I think there should be a first aid kit behind the customer service desk or in the break room, assuming somebody hasn’t taken it yet. Help me get back there, and I’ll see if it’s where it usually is.”

The younger girl bit her lip, but nodded, wrapping one arm around Lapis’ middle and allowing the taller of the two to stand with some difficulty, one of her own thin arms resting around Peridot’s shoulders. Between the blonde’s prosthetics and the bluenette’s side injury and the adrenaline from being attacked wearing off, it was a little difficult to make it all the way across the store and to the customer service desk, but they managed it nonetheless. Lapis pulled away from her girlfriend then, stumbling around to try to look for the first aid kit she knew the employees had to keep back there.

She found exactly what she was looking for underneath the desk, and closed her grip around the handle of the first aid kit before straightening herself up with a small grown. “I got it,” she announced to the younger girl, and Peridot quickly dashed around the counter to help Lapis sit down in the chair behind some shelves for employees that had gotten tired on their feet all day. The blonde removed the dress with a little bit of wriggling on the bluenette’s part, and removed the paper towel that had been used to cover up the wound at first.

Lapis hissed slightly in pain as Peridot rubbed disinfectant onto the wound to clean it out and try to prevent any sort of infection. “I know it sucks,” the younger of the two sighed heavily as she finished, and wrapped gauze around her girlfriend’s middle to try and keep it covered. “But I can’t have you getting blood poisoning and dying on me just yet. We still need to make it all the way out to that cabin, right? We still have all of our supplies. We can do it.”

The older teen’s face had settled into a frown as she shifted to sit up straight, head tilted. “I’ll be fine, Peridot, really. It’s just a flesh wound, and we’re cleaning it out. Don’t worry your pretty little head too much about it.” She ran her fingers through the younger’s blonde hair gently, managing to force herself to smile a little. Peridot glanced up to meet her eyes, and Lapis’ heart melted at the small smile that was returned her way. “We’ll still make it all the way to the cabin, and this will heal, and we’ll be together for a long time. I promise.”  
She wasn’t stupid. She knew that her soulmate was getting sick - but she wanted to believe that she just had a cold or the flu, so that was what she clung to. She didn’t want their time together to be cut so short. If she had contracted the illness, then there was just a matter of time until the younger girl’s organs began failing… and if Lapis hadn’t been infected while having such close contact with her sick mother for the weeks she had been infected, then she didn’t think she would be lucky enough to die when her girlfriend did.

So she just chose to believe that everything would be fine. She chose to believe that she wouldn’t die of this stab wound, that Peridot wouldn’t die of the illness, that they could live together for a long time and not have to worry about dying until at least they ran out of food. She didn’t think that everything was going to be okay - not really - but she wanted to. She told herself constantly that there was no way the world was cruel enough to rip them apart so soon, and she told herself that it would all work itself out.

At the very least, though, Peridot seemed to be reassured, her cheeks turning a light shade of pink and the smile on her face brightening. Lapis blushed as well when the younger girl gently brushed her lips against her nose. For the moment, despite the fact that they were holed up in an abandoned department store and had just finished cleaning up a stab wound that could have been deadly on one of them, everything was calm, and nothing mattered but the two of them sitting together in the quiet.

“We keep losing travelling days by hiding out in buildings,” Lapis grumbled after a little bit of silence, shifting a little to get off the chair and help Peridot put away the various objects that had been pulled out of the first aid kit. “Let’s keep this in the backpack and keep moving. If you can walk, then I’m sure I can, too. We should at least try to get a few hours’ worth of walking out of the way so we’re not journeying and worrying about muggers for the next few  _ weeks.” _ She was also worried about beating fate, but she supposed that was a little messed up to say out loud.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Peridot shrugged, closing the first aid kit before stuffing it along with the rest of their supplies and getting to her feet. She extended a hand that Lapis took gratefully, accepting the assistance to get up and stretch. “If you get tired, though, we’ll stop. That laceration was really deep and nasty, and I don’t want to make you overwork yourself and strain the wound, okay? Making sure you don’t die is more important than getting into the woods in a timely manner.”

“I don’t think having a little cut in my side is nearly as dramatic an injury as losing legs,” was all Lapis commented for a moment, a frown seemingly stuck on her face as she glanced down at the metal of the prosthetics glinting out from some holes in Peridot’s pants. “Seriously, I’m fine. I should be telling  _ you _ not to overwork yourself. Let’s just take a break whenever either of us gets tired, okay?” She pressed a light kiss against the top of her girlfriend’s head, and kept her hand closed around the younger’s as they began to make their way out of the store once more.

“This isn’t a suffering contest, Lapis,” Peridot responded with a roll of her eyes, though the smile on her face told the older of the two that it was a good natured response. “It’s been a few weeks since I started wearing prosthetics. I’m pretty used to not having legs by now.  _ You _ haven’t even stopped bleeding yet, it’s just slowed down. You got  _ fucking stabbed.” _

“Yeah, I’m pretty badass, aren’t I?” Lapis joked lightly, a grin across her lips as she lightly flicked her girlfriend’s nose.

“You are  _ ridiculous.” _


	11. Chapter 11

The woods were, honestly, kind of new compared to the rest of the city. They were the result of a group of environmentalists campaigning to restore the woodland by expanding and planting trees leading up to the tree line that had been there before. The newer portions of the woods weren’t much older than Lapis; her mother had complained about the buildings that needed to be knocked down for it several times, but since they were mostly the older parts of the suburbs Lapis didn’t find herself worrying too extensively about any rich people that had been removed from their houses in order to find bigger, better homes out in the country somewhere.

Peridot, on the other hand, had never seen any sort of forest before in her life unless it was in pictures or on television, and she seemed to be absolutely floored at the idea of wandering into those trees and  _ living _ there for the remainder of their short lives. She got sicker and sicker with every moment, and her skin had taken on a sickly pallor, but she hadn’t looked happier since the day that the soulmates met. She was excited, and since she was so happy, Lapis supposed that she was too.

“So, is the woods anything like in  _ Camp Pining Hearts? _ With dangerous big animals and teenagers all over the place? Or is it more like a Disney movie? I mean, I know that forest critters don’t talk, that’s silly, but I doubt they could quite match up with the horror stories that are all over the place.” Peridot had been talking almost nonstop since the trees came into view, and while Lapis might have been annoyed if it was anyone else, she found that her girlfriend was the most pleasant person possible to listen to rambling. “Or is it, like, a combination of both?”

“Well, I’d say it’s a little like  _ Camp Pining Hearts, _ but in my experience there are more deer than mountain lions - and there aren’t any bears in this part of the country, so you don’t need to worry about those. The animals are dangerous, but for the most part as long as you leave them alone they should leave you alone - and there aren’t any summer camps that operate in November that I know of.” She clucked her tongue quietly, and as she came up to the chain link fence that separated the edge of the city from the beginning of the woods, she turned around to take one last look.

Peridot turned with her, and rested her head against Lapis’ shoulder - the older of the two linked their hands together, intertwining their fingers ever so gently and giving a small sigh. The first and hardest part of their journey was over, and it was time to just make it to where they would spend the rest of their lives together. To make it where they would be together, where they would be  _ home, _ until they moved on to their next lives together. She needed to reflect on that for a moment, but…

They were losing sunlight, and they needed to get going.

The blue haired teenager (though most of her hair was back to being jet black, the dyed tips faded) knelt so that Peridot could plant one artificial foot in the palms of her hands. Lapis helped her up and watched as she toppled over the top of the fence, landing on the leaf covered ground with a squealing grunt that might have been funny if she wasn’t so worried about her girlfriend’s wellbeing. “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice quiet and panicked as she watched her get up, dazed.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Peridot responded, giving Lapis a reassuring smile and trying to continue looking dignified - the attempt was almost funny. “It wasn’t that much of a fall. C’mon, let’s get going, we want to get under the cover of the trees a little bit before the sun goes down! We won’t have as much daylight as usual with all of the branches and leaves covering us!” She just talked and talked as Lapis pulled herself up the fence, and then climbed down with much more grace than the blonde had possessed - probably chalked up to the fact that she was more athletic and had both of her legs.

Lapis grabbed onto Peridot’s hand the moment that she was on the ground, and hand in hand the two teenagers began walking into the woods. They walked in silence for a while, and while the older of the two missed the sound of her girlfriend’s voice a little, she was also relieved by the quiet. The sounds of the wind ruffling through the leaves was peaceful and reassuring, and Lapis found herself becoming sleepy as they walked in the lonely woods. Drowsy now that she was reasonably safe.

The sunset winked through the openings in the canopy in the woods, leaving patches of light across the two soulmates and the fallen leaves surrounding them. The entire picture was like something out of a movie or a photograph or a masterpiece in a museum, and Lapis was tempted to just stop and enjoy her calm surroundings - and so that was what she suggested in a murmur in Peridot’s ear, a light giggle leaving her when the younger girl looked to her with a quick and excited nod. The blonde had such a zest for life, and the older of the two adored it.

They found a tall tree to rest underneath, and Lapis eased herself into a sitting position against the trunk - Peridot slid into her lap mere moments later, one hand reaching to resume a link with one of the older’s that was accepted immediately. She kept her calm blue gaze upwards, watching the little specks of sunlight drifting into the woods as they became dimmer and dimmer and night rested upon the woods. She was tired, mere moments away from falling asleep, and when she noticed that Peridot was snoring softly, she decided not to fight it.

She closed her eyes and slept.

* * *

 

Waking up was a slow and easy process, even with the fact that Lapis’ back and neck were beginning to ache from sleeping sitting up for so long. She blinked away the blur that had settled over her vision, struggling to wake up enough to get up and keep walking - and when she looked down at the smaller girl still sleeping with her head in her lap, a fond smile was the first expression that drifted across her sleepy face. Peridot’s eyes were closed, her expression peaceful, her cheeks ever so slightly flushed and her lips slightly parted. She looked so innocent, so sweet, so adorable.

Which was why it hurt Lapis a little to realize that her complexion was a little more sickly, her breathing coming out in wheezes, her body heat even warmer than it had been the day before. Peridot was getting worse and worse with every moment that passed, and the older of the two wasn’t sure whether she wanted to keep the quiet peace of the moment or to let a sense of urgency take over her. Whether she wanted to take her time and hurry.

Normally, Lapis might have gone with just taking her leisurely time with Peridot, but she was beginning to realize that reality was not on her side. She was going to try to carry the younger girl, wanting her to be able to get her rest, but the moment she shifted the blonde groaned and her innocent green eyes blinked open in order to look at her. The older of the two couldn’t help but blush at the small, sleepy smile that was directed her way, though that vanished as soon as Peridot began coughing and wheezing and her heart sank to the bottom of her stomach.

“I’m sorry for waking you,” she apologized, her voice quiet and loving as she nudged her face gently against the side of the younger girl’s neck. Peridot let out a content sigh, and Lapis thought for just a moment that the cough had just been momentary and temporary, but she knew that wasn’t the case. “I was going to carry you and keep walking like that, but now that you’re awake, are you ready to get going? I’m sure we’re getting pretty close by now. The cabin isn’t  **that** far into the woods.”

“It’s okay. I can’t think of a better way to wake up,” the blonde murmured softly, pressing a kiss against Lapis’ cheek and making her blush a little bit. “I’m… feeling worse than I was yesterday. But yeah, I definitely think that I can keep going, as… as long as we take a few breaks and go slow. Sorry for being so inconvenient, but… it has to get worse before it gets better, right?” There was a hopeful twinkle in her eyes, and Lapis desperately wanted to believe her, so she did. She chose to convince herself that this wasn’t the plague and Peridot would get better any day now.

“Yeah. If it’s the flu, that makes sense. This one time, I got really sick, and I could barely move the day before I started getting better.” She gently shifted Peridot off of her lap and rose to her feet, reaching one hand down in order to help the blonde off - but as soon as she grabbed onto her hand and put her weight against her, Lapis yelped at a sudden stabbing pain in her wound and had to back up a few steps, accidentally dropping Peridot and feeling guilty about it immediately. Her girlfriend, however, looked more confused and concerned than angry.

“Are you okay?” the blonde asked, getting up on her own and reaching out to gently grab onto Lapis’ shoulders. Before the older of the two could come up with a response, Peridot gently grabbed onto the bottom of her dress and carefully lifted in order to look at her wound - and what she saw apparently disgusted or scared her, because she put one hand over her mouth and let out a soft squealing noise, letting the fabric of the clothing fall back to :Lapis’ knees.

“What?” she asked, her brows furrowing and a frown appearing on her face. Lapis lifted the dress back up in order to look down at her wound, and her heart leapt into her throat when she realized that the skin surrounding it had swollen and reddened, visible even with the bandage wrapped around her middle. The wound had gotten infected, despite their efforts to clean it - the knife the mugger used must have been a dirty one. At first, Lapis was filled with despair at the knowledge that there wasn’t much either of them could really do about it because they had abandoned Pearl and Bismuth, but… for the most part, she was frustrated that she couldn’t have anything good besides Peridot, and she was even more determined to make her way to the cabin.

“Come on, we need to keep moving before this gets worse and you get sicker,” she announced, her voice breaking slightly as she grabbed onto Peridot’s hand. She knew that they weren’t going to last long anyway, but that didn’t keep her from being scared of the unknown that they were going to face - scared of what they had coming for them in whatever life came next.

As long as Peridot was with her, though, she was sure that she would be fine.

As long as Peridot was with her, she could be brave and face the unknown with determination, and make  _ it _ scared of  _ her, _ like it should be.

The younger girl took one look at her expression, and her own hardened into one of an equal amount of determination. She reached for Lapis’ hand and nodded, and the taller of the two leaned forward in order to brush a small kiss against Peridot’s lips before beginning to walk deeper into the woods.


	12. Chapter 12

The woods were a lot deeper than Lapis was sure she remembered.

They had been walking for hours now, and it was getting progressively more and more difficult for the both of them to keep on pushing forward with Peridot being so sick and Lapis struggling with the wound in her side that she was beginning to fear was getting infected. The only thing keeping them moving was the promise that soon, soon, it would be over, and they could be together in peace and quiet until the end inevitably came for them.

Trees towered upwards taller than the older of the two remembered from the many, many hikes that her nature oriented aunt and cousin had dragged her on during her childhood, usually while her mother was at work, and though she knew it had been nearly ten years since the last time she was on one of those long walks through the woods and she  _ knew _ that trees  _ grew, _ she wasn’t sure that they should get to be so excessively tall. She wondered if maybe she was shrinking, or at the very least just watching the world stretch around her due to fatigue.

Every little sound was enough to make her jump and fear for her own and Peridot’s safety. Every time a small animal dashed across the trail, Lapis jumped back - and the one time a deer ran out in front of them, afraid of the odd humans that had wandered into its territory, she nearly screamed. At first, Peridot teased her about being so jumpy, but when she stepped on a twig and Lapis very nearly crushed her by clinging tightly like a baby koala, she decided that it was best to just hold her hand and keep her calm.

The breeze contained the bite of autumn in the constant shade of the forest, moreso than in the town, and the trees shifted in the wind. It crossed Lapis’ mind that it was getting close to November by now - that her eighteenth birthday was coming up, not that it really mattered at the moment, now that the world was ending now. She wished she had her hands on a calendar, or some sort of electricity… maybe it was still on in the cabin; she wasn’t sure that power would just turn off altogether. She hadn’t exactly done a lot of research into how everything would change if humanity was wiped out.

“This is kind of peaceful,” Peridot commented softly, her hand warm with fever and clasping around Lapis’ comfortably, her voice tearing the older teenager from her thoughts. “I mean, in the city it was just a little disturbing, because that was where humans always lived and bustled around and usually there would be a lot of noise made. Here, it’s always supposed to be quiet. It’s just animals and trees and us and the rest of nature. I think we could stay here forever if we really needed to.” Her wording was enough to make Lapis a little bit concerned that she was trying to convince her to give up.

Maybe she wasn’t hiding how tired she was as well as she thought. Maybe Peridot was trying to make it so that she looked unafraid. The older of the two didn’t know, nor did she particularly care. She was determined to get all the way to the cabin, and she knew that they were getting close - she could  _ feel _ it, could feel the sense of  **home** becoming stronger and making her less afraid.

“It’s a good thing we will, then,” she responded, trying to keep her voice casual but mostly just succeeding in making herself sound accusatory and defensive. She didn’t really care - she was just determined to keep walking until they hit the very end, whether that be their destination or their premature demises. “Come on, we’re almost there. We can relax when we get inside - we can’t afford to lose too much sunlight.”  _ We can’t afford to lose each other, _ she added silently, but decided to keep that quiet in case saying it was wrong and she caused too much fear.

She just wanted to get to the point where she could collapse on the ancient couch in the living room and take a nap - possibly forever. She just wanted to be able to rest and not worry about being eaten by an animal or bandits breaking into their hideout while the couple was asleep. She just wanted to be done with this long, long journey that was made even more extensive by their injuries and horrid circumstances. She was just so ready to be  _ done _ and prepare for her own death, because she was tired of fighting, and if she had Peridot by her side she was sure she would go happily.

* * *

 

Lapis’ steps were a struggle, as she was feeling weak from supporting Peridot and trying to deal with her still sore but scabbed over wound, but she did her best to hide how she was feeling. Her sundress was ruined by blood, much of the blue fabric taken over by an ugly dried brown - and she was concentrating on just being upset over that, because if she focused on how miserable everything else was making her. She was just glad that she wouldn’t have to walk through the woods anymore, at least. She was looking forward to the rest of her doomed to be short life.

“There’s a key in the flower pot,” she announced tiredly, leaning against the wood of the door tiredly and watching as Peridot kneeled down to pick up said object and dig out the key. Both of them were exhausted from walking all day while injured and ill, but there was an unspoken happiness and relief between them at finally being safe - for the moment, at least, until their injuries and illnesses eventually did them in. Regardless, they could live in peace for a little longer in the old log cabin, and even though Lapis was tempted to be covered in self pity for the moment she was glad for that.

The shorter girl handed the key up to her, and Lapis wasted little time in unlocking the door and allowing it to swing open. She let out a sigh of relief and walked into the cabin, looking around at the familiar surroundings - the small kitchen to the side, a living room with an old couch and coffee table and a cheap television from the 90’s resting there, the classic novels on the bookcase rarely touched and even more sparsely read. She breathed in the dusty air, the strong smell of wood, and she knew that she was in the house she had vacationed in during the summers and knew that the worst of it was done.

“Welcome to Castle Lazuli,” she announced jokingly, turning to Peridot with a small smile that grew when she realized that the younger of the two was looking around with a grin on her face. “It’s like some shit ripped right out of  _ Twin Peaks, _ but it’s a good place to live. A good place to sleep. We can do anything we want here. We aren’t in danger of being stabbed anymore, whether it be in the side of the leg. Unless, of course, you have some messed up kink you haven’t told me about.”

“Ew.” Peridot wrinkled her nose and socked Lapis ever so gently in the shoulder. The older of the two only responded by wrapping her arms tightly around her in a protective embrace, and her girlfriend returned the hold equally as tightly, face burying itself in Lapis’ shoulder. It crossed her mind, just for a moment, that her soulmate was burning up worse than she had ever felt on another human being, and a certain level of helplessness settled over the taller girl’s heart.

If either of them deserved to live, deserved to do anything at all, it was Peridot - but that would just mean that she would be left alone for God knows how long. This situation was exhausting, but Lapis didn’t want to linger on it. She just wanted to act like everything was normal - she just wanted everything to be okay and safe, which they were. So even though she was tired, she scooped the blonde up in her arms bridal style, laughing ever so slightly at the surprised squeal that Peridot let out when her feet were removed from the ground and the giggles that left her when kisses were pressed all over her face.

“What would you like to do first, my darling?” Lapis asked, her tone in an overly exaggerated English accent for the sake of making Peridot laugh and be happy and grinning when she succeeded in making her cackle slightly. “We could take a nap, try to take a bath, I could try to make up some food in the kitchen or something, I  _ think _ there’s a foosball table somewhere but I honestly haven’t played in years so I’m not sure how well that would go… we could get our sins on, too.”

Peridot seemed to think about it a moment, letting out a small hum as she rested her head against Lapis’ shoulder and tapping her fingers on her back. “Food sounds good. I mean, we haven’t bathed in a while, but I don’t feel like walking back and forth between in here and down to some water and making up a fire to get it hot. That’s how they did things before electricity, right?” She shrugged, and Lapis carried her over to the couch and gently laid her down.

“Theoretically, yeah, but we might still have running water. There’s nobody to turn off the power or whatever, and we haven’t had a big enough storm to knock down any power lines that would need to be repaired.” She thought that was how it worked. She wasn’t sure, though, and she was cursing herself for not trying to learn about crap like this while she still had access to the Internet. “Though there isn’t exactly anybody to run the facilities. I don’t know. We could check.” Lapis stretched and walked over to the kitchen, shrugging the backpack on her shoulder off to the table and beginning to rummage for food.

“It’s been a while, I’m pretty sure that everything will be down by now,” Peridot shrugged, shifting to sit more comfortably on the couch with her legs crossed and her head tilted as she watched the older girl. “Power or no power, though… it’s really nice to actually have somewhere safe.”

Lapis simply nodded in agreement as she decided on a loaf of bread and some peanut butter that was tucked towards the bottom of the bag. It had been a while since they had the time to actually make sandwiches - how weird that it was a treat now.

* * *

 

After dinner, Lapis and Peridot had laid down in one of the bedrooms together, the thick blanket atop the king sized bed completely covered in dust but otherwise the softest and most comfortable thing that they had even looked at since their first shelter was taken over by Jasper and her cronies. Neither of them slept for a little while, simply linking hands and staring at the dust specks that were clearly visible in the bright light leaking in through the window. It was as if the entire world had stilled.

“What’s our plan for now?” the younger of the two asked softly, turning her head in order to look at Lapis with bright eyes. Her glasses were off, laying on the nightstand to the side, and Lapis felt her breath catch in her throat at how beautiful Peridot was in that moment. How peaceful, despite her sickly skin tone and cheeks flushed bright pink with fever.

“Let’s just try to live normally,” the taller girl responded quietly, pressing a careful peck against Peridot’s lips. “Try to act like a normal married couple. Just for as long as we have. Pretend we have the life that we never will be able to.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peace. Or at least, an attempt at it.

When Peridot awoke, the first thing she noticed was that it was more calm and peaceful in the cabin than she had felt since the day after she met her soulmate. She was overheating from a combination of her fever and Lapis’ body heat pressed against her own with the addition of the blanket, but she couldn’t bring herself to mind as she slowly opened her eyes, looking around at the small amount of light leaking into the room and the analog clock on the wall above the door that read 7:34. The older girl was still snoring gently, her arms wrapped loosely around her and her breathing coming out softly; her heart was melting almost as much as the rest of her was at the moment.

She didn’t have the heart to move away from the snuggle pile, but she did try to shift a little bit so she could redirect a small amount of the heat away from her so she didn’t do something dramatic like literally catch on fire. Peridot tried, really tried, to move slowly and gently enough that Lapis’ slumber wouldn’t be disturbed, but it seemed that luck wasn’t on her side because the moment she broke her body away from the older girl’s even slightly she groaned and tightened her grip around the blonde.

She froze, waiting to see if Lapis would wake up the rest of the way, but she seemed to fall back asleep as quickly as she had stirred. If Peridot tried to claim that she wasn’t more than a little bit enamored with the older girl at the moment, she would be lying through her teeth, but she didn’t feel like overheating any further, so she had to get some way to cool herself down. Hesitantly, the experiment pulled her arm free in order to throw the thick blanket that had somehow ended up on top of them off.

Lapis shivered against her, and Peridot almost mourned a little for the peace that was partially lost when the older girl’s dark blue eyes sleepily blinked open. “Dude, freezing,” she managed to slur out through her sleepiness, and for a moment the blonde was a little concerned that she couldn’t even notice how cold it was over her fever - the older’s brown skin was covered in goosebumps, and upon looking down at her own thin arms, she found that she was, too.

But she didn’t want to go back to being way too warm, so she hesitated, stammering a little bit, before she eventually spoke up. “I’m practically melting,” she protested weakly, not sure if she prioritized her own comfort of Lapis’ more. “Can we please keep the blanket off? Just for a little bit longer? I don’t want to get up and move.” Something in the back of her mind warned her that it would just make her sicker if she kept exposing her fevered flesh to the cold air, but she told that part to shut up. She wasn’t exactly guaranteed any longevity here, so why try?

There was quiet from Lapis for a moment, and Peridot began to think that she had just fallen back asleep, but before she could completely reach that conclusion the taller girl’s legs kicked off the blanket and left them both exposed to the air. She shivered, but just curled closer to the blonde; she must have felt like a space heater if she was overheating right now, she supposed, so she accepted it and nudged her face into her girlfriend’s hair in order to at least try to relax and get back to sleep.

It wasn’t to be, though, because she had already been awake too long. Peridot sighed heavily, beginning to get a little bit bored with just letting Lapis lay down and sleep in against her, and carefully edged away from the older girl in order to sit up with a bit of difficulty - the sudden movement made her feel nauseous all over again, and internally she cursed being sick. The older girl groaned in discontent quietly, and the blonde froze, ready to just suck it up and get back to laying down, but Lapis just rolled over and went back to sleep; Peridot sighed in relief, and reached for her prosthetics, which were leaning against the wall of the room.

The more she stayed sitting up, the more lightheaded she got, but Peridot strapped on her legs nonetheless and pulled herself up out of the bed; she almost fell over, but caught herself on the nightstand before she could. She knew, logically, that she probably ought to just lay down and keep resting if she wanted to last much longer than a few days, but she was nothing if not a girl of action, and she absolutely did not want to stay still any longer until she couldn’t remain upright anymore.

She stretched with a groan and a popping of joints that she doubted she should be experiencing at sixteen before leaving the room and getting sledgehammered by the brighter daylight of the living room. She groaned, rubbing her eyes irritably, before limping into the kitchen. If she was the first one out of bed, she might as well try to put together a breakfast for the both of them, even if they hadn’t quite figured out how to rewire the electricity and were limited to what canned food and cereal they had left. Which was, thankfully, enough to last them at least a week or so.

She could light a fire outside and cook up some beans if she felt like eating something warm, but as it was she didn’t really feel like doing anything much at all, so she was content with just digging around in the cupboards until she found bowls and pouring some cereal into two of them. Lapis hadn’t looked like she would be ready to get up anytime soon, so she didn’t feel too terribly guilty about beginning to eat her own food and sitting down on the couch, reaching for the old fashioned radio that lay abandoned on the side table and deciding to see if she could do anything to it.

Peridot pried open the back of the radio and began studying the inner workings of the machine, adjusting some wires and testing to see if the batteries were still operational (they weren’t, which she was annoyed by). She kind of wished she had managed to scrounge up some while she and Lapis were raiding abandoned buildings and foraging for supplies, but she figured she could probably make something that would take the spot and work just as well if she could figure out what they had…

She was so wrapped up in her planning to fix the radio that she didn’t notice that Lapis had woken up and left the bedroom until she was jostled slightly by weight suddenly pulling the cushions of the couch down. Peridot blinked and looked over to her side; the older girl had taken the bowl she left out for her and was practically falling asleep where she sat. “You know, you can go back to bed. I’m not doing anything interesting,” the blonde spoke softly, turning her attention back to the device in her lap. “I just wanna see if I can get this thing working again.”

“Wanna be near you,” the older girl grunted in response, even sounding like she had crawled out of the underworld by her blunt fingernails. “Just keep quiet while you work and we probably won’t have any problems with me being awake already.”

“Whatever you say.”

* * *

 

There was a beach a little ways into the woods, down the hill. Since their running water was limited and neither of them really wanted to have a bath filled with water that would get pretty grody being used for drinking and bathing and cooking, it was decided they would keep it just for food and drink related affairs and take a trip down to the beach to get clean.

Of course, it was a little illogical to expect to get washed up in salt water that was filled with algae and sand and God knows what else, but it was hard to argue with the prospect of having a beach day with the girl she was in love with. The walk down to the ocean was a little difficult, but hand in hand, they did it anyway - and it occurred to Peridot just as she was beginning to hear the waves crashing into shore that she had never seen the ocean in real life before.

Lapis, whose wounds were getting infected and who was beginning to struggle a little bit with any sort of exertion, had been a little amused by that - they lived in a city that was  _ called _ Beach City, but then again, Peridot had never left the lab where she had been created, so she couldn’t really been faulted for that. Actually, her soulmate loved the ocean so much that the experiment couldn’t help but get excited.

The beach was a lot  _ bigger _ than she had expected, and her breath was taken away by the sheer  _ scale _ of the body of water that she was faced with. Peridot had seen pictures before, but none of them could compare to the actual sight she was seeing now. “Impressed?” Lapis commented in a tone that was almost a joke, nudging the younger girl carefully and laughing a little when she just nodded speechlessly. “Okay, the waves are gonna rough you up a little bit, but I’ll be with you, I promise. It might be best to take off your legs so they don’t rust over or anything, and I can carry you.”

The idea of taking her ability to actually walk like a human being away was a little frightening, but Peridot hesitantly nodded and sunk to sit and unstrap her prosthetics. Lapis lifted her up on her back for a piggy back ride as soon as she was finished, and the blonde felt a little bit guilty about the way that the older girl stumbled before she was carried towards the temperamental water - she was nervous, but at the same time, she was excited to go swimming for the first time in her life. “You have the soap and stuff, right?” She asked, clinging to her girlfriend like a baby koala except ten times tighter.

“It’s in my pack, when I put you down I’ll turn around and go grab it. Relax, I’ve got everything under control,” Lapis responded, a little out of breath - Peridot was honestly pretty impressed she wasn’t panting and wheezing by now, with how difficult everything was for her. The infection her legs had been through hadn’t been nearly this bad, but she knew that the older girl wouldn’t say anything about it as she was set down on the sand next to the edge of the water.

The blonde scooted over to the edge of the water, settling the stumps where her legs suddenly cut off in the rushing saltwater - she gasped softly at the  _ relief _ of having water rush over her grimy skin. She looked back and watched the older girl walk back with her backpack in hand.

Lapis sank into the shallow waters next to her, scooting so that she could sit and pull her now sopping clothes off in order to scrub herself down before she would help clean Peridot up. The blonde watched quietly in between overwhelmed glances at the vast ocean before her; but the older girl got her total attention as soon as she pulled her dress off and her wounds were shown.

“God, Lapis, that’s terrible!” Peridot practically squealed out, staring at the reddened skin taking over almost all of the older girl’s abdomen and side, the cut from the knife deep and discolored. “Oh my god, I don’t even know how we could fix that, why haven’t you said anything--”

She sighed heavily and reached over to put her hand over the younger girl’s mouth. “Look, let’s just try to enjoy our day, okay? We’ll talk about this later.”

Peridot hesitated, but nodded nonetheless, though she didn’t stop worrying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, quick announcement.
> 
> i'm going to finish this trilogy and gurgle, and then i am done with long-term steven universe fics. meaning i will stick to miniseries and oneshots if anything at all. because as much as i love this show, and i love lapidot, i am sick to death of this fandom's shit and it feels like i'm writing the same thing over and over and i need a change. if i have another big idea, i might eat these words, but the fandom drama has turned me off from writing any more longfics. sorry.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life's a pattern. Or at least, something like it.

Life fell into a pattern, or at least something similar to one. The two would wake up somewhat early in the morning, eat something together, and then walk down to the beach in order to spend the day swimming and playing together until night fell and they got too cold laying down underneath the stars. They settled into this routine easily, as it was relatively simple and didn’t cause a lot of trouble for either of them, but eventually Lapis’ infection made it nigh difficult for her to walk all the way up the hill from the beach even though Peridot could still make it despite her fever and prosthetic legs.

That was fine. They could live through that. Their routine changed.

Though the both of them were getting sicker, neither really wanted to give up what life they had together. They were content, if a little bored at times; Lapis became the one that would usually heat up their dwindling food supply or try to figure out some new recipe from their limited resources, and she was usually the one that cleaned up when things around the cabin got too messy. Her health even looked like it was improving the more the rested and stayed calmly inside, doing general household chored.

Peridot managed to keep herself rather busy as well. She was fairly happy just living with her soulmate, and she found a rather occupying job in trying to continue to tinker and attempt to repair the radio. She doubted that anything would be broadcasting anymore, but she wanted to know if there was any sort of news that would allow them to return to some form of civilization; maybe Bismuth had managed to recreate and distribute the cure or something, and humanity was trying to get back on its feet! She doubted it, but… it would be nice to know if something like that did happen.

Heck, she would be content with just hearing some sort of signal, even if it was just static. She wanted to know that she was a good enough engineer to accomplish that much - it even reached the point that she only looked away if Lapis needed help with some chore or another, or if she was hassled into spending some time with her soulmate. It started to feel like they had years to spend together instead of mere months; Lapis’ infection seemed to be getting better on its own by some miracle, and Peridot’s health had reached a point that it wasn’t deteriorating much further. She wasn’t exactly getting  _ better, _ but it wasn’t getting  _ worse, _ either.

In attempts to drive her fever down, Lapis often hassled her into not wearing thick blankets and sweatshirts around lest she make her body heat even worse. She wanted to argue about it, but she found herself just wrinkling her nose and cooperating with her girlfriend; not much of a point in arguing if she was logically correct, really. As much as it  _ pained _ Peridot down to her very core to admit it.

So the radio project fell to the back burner. She still worked on it, but only when Lapis was fast asleep and she was rendered unable to fall asleep for one reason or another and the isolation would otherwise drive her insane. It was like she and her soulmate were, quite literally, the only two people left in the universe - the older of the two sometimes made jokes about how it was a good thing they had the same parts because how terrifying would it be to have to repopulate the Earth, right? Peridot laughed at that, though she found herself a little terrified by the idea and silently agreeing wholeheartedly.

There really wasn’t much of anything to do in the middle of the woods with nobody else living anywhere nearby. They ran out of things to talk about - even sex got boring after a while. Peridot was beginning to lose patience with her radio, and Lapis couldn’t exactly make it down to the beach. They had lasted longer than either expected, so their food supply was beginning to dwindle to the point that they began rationing it out every seven days; eating less left both of them hungry and grouchy, which led to arguments between them.

Their first fight happened a month after they moved into the cabin, and consisted of a yelling match in the kitchen over how much they should eat on each day (Lapis, who was thin and used to not eating very much, was fine with a meal and a half every day; Peridot, who liked food a lot thank you very much, was adamant about having  _ at least _ two meals every day). It ended with Lapis getting angry enough that she stormed (or, rather, limped in an attempt to storm) out of the cabin, declaring that her name was  _ Robyn _ and she wasn’t going to accept a nickname based on the color of Peridot’s soulmate tattoo anymore. The younger of the two was frustrated enough that she locked the door behind her.

Within less than an hour, though, she was beginning to regret her words and miss the quiet company of her soulmate. She was too prideful to go running out into the woods after her, but she  _ did _ walk over to the front door and unlock it so that the older girl could decide to come back whenever she wanted. By the time an hour had passed, she was seriously worried about Lapis’ safety, and was pacing back and forth in the living room, terrified of an animal or her infection hurting her.

An hour and a half after their fight, the front door of the cabin opened and Lapis, looking sheepish, walked into the room. Peridot rushed over to her and wrapped her arms tightly around her soulmate, ignoring the soft hiss of pain that was let out when her wound was jostled. “I’m sorry, you’re right, please don’t leave again,” she murmured softly, clinging to her girlfriend with a surprising amount of strength for somebody who was sick and whose strength was dwindling.

“I’m sorry too, I shouldn’t have yelled and I shouldn’t have left,” the older girl spoke in a voice barely above a whisper, her arms wrapping around Peridot just as tightly and her chin resting on the shorter’s hair. “We can figure something out about the food, and you can keep calling me Lapis, I don’t care.” They stood there together, just holding each other tightly and giving themselves a moment to get over the argument before finally they broke apart from the embrace.

That night, they stuck more closely together than they had in a while, sitting on the couch with Peridot working on her radio and Lapis resting her head on her shoulder.

They had more fights after that, but mostly over very small and trivial things, and rarely did they escalate into yelling - never again did Lapis storm out of the house, and never again did they hit a point where they were actually angry with each other (mostly a little tired of each other’s company and wanting space, which they could get by locking themselves up). The both of them were getting a little stir crazy as well, but neither really complained about it.

One night, the sound of static filled the cabin, and Peridot would have jumped off of the couch with a triumphant yell if she had been wearing her prosthetics (she was more comfortable with them off and they didn’t have to leave the house, so it was rare for her to have them on anymore - Lapis would just carry her to bed when it was needed, and she had learned to crawl with just her arms when it was truly necessary). Lapis sprinted out of the bedroom to find her girlfriend holding up the radio and yelling how she had done it, the radio was working again.

They celebrated that night, but no matter what channel they tuned into, nothing was being broadcast - no music, no voices, never anything but eerie static.

Truly, they were the last people around.

* * *

 

Six weeks after they moved into the cabin, Peridot’s condition began rapidly deteriorating, to the point that she was fine one day but unable to get out of bed by the next. Lapis, seriously concerned and frustrated that her infection was improving while her girlfriend and only companion became more sick, did her best to take care of her for the three days that she was rendered weak and useless.

On the fourth day, it began to snow.

The younger of the two had never seen snow in anything but a picture before, so Lapis held her upright so that she could look out of the bedroom window. Peridot’s green eyes were dulled by her illness, but brightened up with wonder when she looked out at the large flakes falling slowly to the ground. “It’s beautiful,” she rasped out, her voice soft and weak, and Lapis just held her up for a few minutes, not wanting to cut off her time looking out at the magical beginnings of winter too soon.

It must have been early December, Lapis decided. She had turned eighteen years old. She was finally a legal adult, though she felt like she had been alive for ages more than eighteen years. She had been forced to age far too quickly by their circumstances. Both of them had. She might have mourned her youth if she had the time or the ability to. She didn’t even, really, have the will to be sad.

Going to a party, getting drunk and being convinced to throw her flip flops into the ocean by Jasper, felt like it was a lifetime ago. Sneaking out the window, getting away from her mother’s corpse, felt like it was a century before. Even digging Peridot up out of the rubble of a crumbling research facility felt like it happened when she was so, so much younger. Laying in bed next to her sick and dying girlfriend, helpless to do anything that would be helpful to her health or save her, made her feel like a child again, though. Like a little toddler trying to do something she couldn’t.

“I’m going to die soon, aren’t I?” the younger of the two asked in a soft and fearful voice, and when Lapis looked over at her, she found those same dulled green eyes looking widened and sad. That single sentence was enough to make the older’s heart lurch in her chest and clench up, a sad feeling making her almost sick as she drew her darling a little bit closer to her, wanting her close. Peridot had survived longer than almost anybody else that had contracted the illness had, but there was only so much time that her immune system could keep her life together.

Lapis opened her mouth, and then closed it, gently resting her forehead against Peridot’s and closing her eyes. She wanted to reassure her, but she saw no point in lying; she just had no idea how she was supposed to say ‘yes’ in a gentle and kind manner. “I’m going to be honest, it doesn’t look too good right now,” she finally responded in a tone that was barely above a whisper. “But I’ll be right behind you. We’ll see each other before you even notice that we’re separated. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Peridot seemed like she was about to say something to argue with her, but she seemed to decide against it, just sighing sadly and nodded. As gently as she possibly could, Lapis brushed some messy blonde hair out of her beloved’s face - it had grown to be hard to manage in the months that they had known each other, just as the older’s dye had faded from her hair, and she supposed that neither of them really looked like themselves anymore.

As they fell asleep, curled up tightly together and trying to be peaceful, Lapis could only hope that their next life would turn out to be gentler.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for following this fic!!! the third fic in the series will be linked at the end of the chapter.

In the early hours of the next morning, Lapis woke up with the feeling that something was wrong despite the pain in her abdomen from her infected wounds dwindling down. She was almost afraid to open up her eyes, scared of what she would find when she acknowledged that she was awake. So she remained where she was for a little while, eyes closed, laying on her back with her numb and slightly sore arms cushioning her head because she gave all of them to Peridot in order to try and keep her comfortable and her breathing slow and calm as if she was trying to make it look like she was still asleep.

Eventually, though, she accepted that she couldn’t just stay still forever, and so - reluctantly, praying that she wouldn’t find anything bad - she sucked in a deep breath and blinked her eyes open. The room looked, for the most part, exactly as it had the many, many previous mornings she had spent in the cabin, and she didn’t know if that was a relief or just made the paranoia and terror of the moment even worse. Lapis just stared at the ceiling for a little while, trying to reassure herself that everything was fine, before she yawned and sat up.

She was surprised to find that the weight of Peridot was still next to her in the bed, but not really; she was pretty sick, but even so she was usually up and about by then, either in the kitchen or on the couch. Lapis’ brows furrowed, and she reached over in order to try and shake her girlfriend awake, not even really realizing that the rise and fall of her shoulders to signify her breathing was gone and she was more still than the older girl had ever seen her in the time they’d been together.

She knew, however, the moment she touched the cold and waxy skin of her soulmate’s shoulder that Peridot’s short life had come to a close. She had died, hopefully peacefully and painlessly, in her sleep from the plague.

She was dead, and Lapis was alone, and to add insult to injury, her recovery from her infection was still happening. She was still going to be alive for God knows how long.

Oddly enough, she couldn’t feel anything. Her heart was thudding quickly in her chest, and she knew that she should be sad, but… she was in shock.

The remaining teenager rolled over so that her feet hit the old wood of the bedroom floor and rose to her feet. She gently tucked the quilt more comfortably around Peridot’s cold shoulders, and left the room in an almost robotic fashion, making her way out of the cabin and into the woods without a clue of where she was going or what she was doing. She was, essentially, working on autopilot as she tried to work out what she was supposed to do with herself; she didn’t know what on Earth was going to happen to her now that she was alone in the world.

She wasn’t truly aware of her destination until she reached the beach.

Lapis stumbled closer to the water and sat in the sand, legs crossed in a lotus style and eyes trained on the tumbling waves of the ocean. She stayed as she was, her breathing slow and calm and her shock slowly wearing off - the numbness of the previous hour or so was gone, and she was struggling to breathe now, tears threatening to spill over at any moment, and she wasn’t entirely sure why she held them back. Maybe she wanted to show to whatever cruel god there was that she was strong.

Instead of breaking down in sobs, though, she came to realize that she was freezing, wearing nothing but the sundress she hadn’t been able to change out of in so long, her feet bare and beginning to sting from walking through the thin layer of snow for so long. She hoped that the cold would kill her; she didn’t want to be alone, she didn’t want to live in a world wear the brilliant and funny and overall  _ good _ Peridot didn’t exist. She didn’t want to deal with this.

So she came to the decision that she wouldn’t. She wasn’t going to live like this. She didn’t care if suicide wasn’t a good way to go out - she only cared that she wouldn’t have to deal with the pain and loneliness that came with being alone in a barely populated world, and she cared that she would be able to find Peridot again as soon as she possibly could in their next life together. Lapis rose to her feet with a small sigh, forcing herself to turn away from the massive ocean and walk back into the trees.

As she reached the cabin once more, she had to force herself to walk back inside. She tried to figure out how she would do things as she went - doing something in the woods would probably be the easiest, but she wanted to die next to Peridot, not all alone amongst the trees. She had reached her conclusion before she even entered the house, and when she did, her first priority was to make a stop in the kitchen and grab a knife. Her nerves making her heart pound and her head dizzy, she walked back into the bedroom, swallowing dryly when she saw her girlfriend’s corpse in the bed again.

Lapis laid down beside her, grabbed onto her cold hand with her own free one. The teenager pretended, just for a moment, that she was still alive, that she intertwined her fingers and that her skin was as warm and soft as it had been for the time they’d had together. She closed her eyes, steeled her courage, positioned the knife above her chest, slowed her breathing down and tried her hardest not to be afraid and to imagine whatever they would have next.

She drove the blade of the knife into her ribs, immediately feeling something in her chest be pierced, hopefully her heart. Breathing suddenly became more difficult through the pain, and she couldn’t help but feel fear as blood bubbled up in her throat, which she coughed up. Mercifully, her consciousness began to fade as she whimpered in pain, and with blurring vision, she turned her head to look over at Peridot’s face - she looked so peaceful and painless, like she was just asleep. Just the idea of being calm and safe like that, with her girlfriend happy and healthy at her side, was enough to calm Lapis down and allow her to close her eyes and drift into nothingness.

* * *

 

As time went by, the planet recovered. New life bloomed. Plants grew, pollution cleared, cities crumbled. The planet flourished, and eventually new creatures began to emerge and evolve from what remained, similar to the figures from the fairytales that humans told one another before they were eliminated. The Earth became new, very similar but nearly unrecognizable from what it had been hundreds of thousands of years before. Kingdoms popped up. Politics formed. The Earth seemed doomed to live the same events over and over until the sun became red.

A million years after the deaths of the humans Robyn Larissa Lazuli and Peridot, a nymph was born to the queen, and shortly after her, a hybrid was created to become a sorceress.

When they were fifteen and sixteen, they met in a garden behind a rose bush, and the young lovers were reunited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sequel: http://archiveofourown.org/works/10755114/chapters/23848173

**Author's Note:**

> comments would be very much appreciated! i'm really excited to be writing this one


End file.
